


1800 1 












































































































































































































































































































































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AMERICAN SCIENCE SERIES—ADVANCED COURSE 

THE HUMAN BODY 


AN ACCOUNT OF 


ITS STRUCTURE AND ACTIVITIES 
AND THE CONDITIONS OF ITS 
HEALTHY WORKING 


BY 

H. NEWELL MARTIN, D.Sc., M.A., M.D., E.R.S. 

Late Professor of Biology in the Johns Hopkins University 
and of Physiology in the Medical Faculty 
of the same 

) •, : 


EIGHTH EDITION, REVISED 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1904 




Copyright, 1881, 1896, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT & CO. 




PUBLISHERS’ NOTE. 

The Appendix on Reproduction of the earlier editions 
appears in this as Chapter XXXIX. Copies of the book 

without the chapter can be had when specially ordered. 

iii 


PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. 


This edition has been very thoroughly worked oyer and, 
I trust, improved. A considerable amount of new matter 
has been added, especially in connection with the cardiac 
and vascular nerves, and the physiology of the brain; but 
throughout the whole book many paragraphs have been re¬ 
written; and many corrections, rendered necessary by the 
discoveries of the last three or four years, have been made. 
I hope therefore that the edition will be found as well up to 
date as it is possible for a text-hook to be: for a text-book 
must always incline to the conservative side, and deal with 
well-established facts rather than with even the most fasci¬ 
nating novelties. Still, as in previous editions, I have tried 
to show where the outposts and the outlooks of Physiology 
are. 9 

H. N. M. 

May 1, 1896. 



PEEFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 


In the following pages I have endeavored to give an 
account of the structure and activities of the Human Body, 
which, while intelligible to the general reader, shall be accu¬ 
rate, and sufficiently minute in details to meet the require¬ 
ments of students who are not making Human Anatomy and 
Physiology subjects of special advanced study. Wherever it 
seemed to me really profitable, hygienic topics have also been 
discussed, though at first glance they may seem less fully 
treated of than in many School or College Text-books of 
Physiology. Whoever will take the trouble, however, to 
examine critically what passes for Hygiene in the majority of 
such cases will, I think, find that, when correct, much of it is 
platitude or truism: since there is so much that ic of impor¬ 
tance and interest to be said it seems hardly worth while to 
occupy space with insisting on the commonplace or obvious. 

It is hard to write a book, not designed for specialists, 
without running the risk of being accused of dogmatism, and 
some readers will, no doubt, be inclined to think that, in 
several instances, I have treated as established facts matters 
which are still open to discussion. General readers and 
students are, however, only bewildered by the production of 
an array of observations and arguments on each side of every 
question, and, in the majority of cases, the chief responsi¬ 
bility under which the author of a text-book lies is to select 
what seem to him the best supported views, and then to state 
them simply and concisely: how wise the choice of a side has 
been in each case can only be determined by the discoveries 
of the future. 

Others will, I am inclined to think, raise the contrary 
objection that too many disputed matters have been dis- 

v 



VI 


PREFACE TO TEE FIRST EDITION. 


cussed: this was deliberately done as the result of an experi¬ 
ence in teaching Physiology which now extends over more 
than ten years. It would have been comparatively easy to 
slip over things still uncertain and subjects as yet unin¬ 
vestigated, and to represent our knowledge of the workings 
■of the animal body as neatly rounded off at all its contours 
and complete in all its details— totus, teres , et rotundus. 
But by so doing no adequate idea of the present state of 
physiological science would have been conveyed; in many 
directions it is much farther travelled and more completely 
known than in others; and, as ever, exactly the most inter¬ 
esting points are those which lie on the boundary between 
what we know and what we hope to know. In gross Anatomy 
there are now but few points calling for a suspension of judg¬ 
ment; with respect to Microscopic Anatomy there are more; 
but a treatise on Physiology which would pass by, unmen¬ 
tioned, all things not known but sought, would convey an 
utterly unfaithful and untrue idea. Physiology has not fin¬ 
ished its course. It is not cut and dried, and ready to be 
laid aside for reference like a specimen in an Herbarium, but 
is comparable rather to a living, growing plant, with some 
stout and useful branches well raised into the light, others 
but part grown, and many still represented by unfolded buds. 
To the teacher, moreover, no pupil is more discouraging than 
the one who thinks there is nothing to learn; and the boy 
who has “ finished ” Latin and “ done 99 Geometry finds some¬ 
times his counterpart in the lad who has “ gone through ” 
Physiology. For this unfortunate state of mind many Text¬ 
books are, I believe, much to blame: difficulties are too often 
ignored, or opening vistas of knowledge resolutely kept out of 
view: the forbidden regions may be, it is true, too rough for 
the young student to be guided through, or as yet pathless 
for the pioneers of thought; but the opportunity to arouse 
the receptive mental attitude apt to be produced by the rec¬ 
ognition of the fact that much more still remains to be learned 
—to excite the exercise of the reasoning faculties upon dis¬ 
puted matters—and, in some of the better minds, to arouse 
the longing to assist in adding to knowledge, is an inesti¬ 
mable advantage, not to be lightly thrown aside through the 
desire to make an elegantly symmetrical book. While I 
trust, therefore, that this volume contains all the more impor¬ 
tant facts at present known about the working of our Bodies, 


PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. vii 

I as earnestly hope that it makes plain that very much is yet 
to be discovered. 

A work of the scope of the present volume is, of course, 
not the proper medium for the publication of novel facts; 
but, while the “ Human Body,” accordingly, professes to be 
merely a compilation, the introduction of constant references 
to authorities would have been out of place. I trust, how¬ 
ever, that it will be found throughout imbued with the influ¬ 
ence of my beloved master, Michael Foster; and on various 
hygienic topics I have to acknowledge a special indebtedness 
to the excellent series entitled Health Primers . 

The majority of the anatomical illustrations are from 
Henle's Anatomie des Menschen , and a few from Arendt’s 
Schulatlas , the publishers of each furnishing electrotypes. 
A considerable number, mainly histological, are from Quain’s 
Anatomy, and a few figures are after Bernstein, Carpenter, 
Frey, Haeckel, Helmholtz, Huxley, McKendrick, and Wundt. 
About thirty, chiefly diagrammatic, were drawn specially for 
the work. 

Quantities are throughout expressed first on the metric sys¬ 
tem, their approximate equivalents in American weights and 
measures being added in brackets. 

H. Newell Martin. 

Baltimore, October, 1880. 



























. . 






















































































































CONTENTS, 


CHAPTER I. 


THE GENERAL STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE 
HUMAN BODY. 


PAGE 

Definitions. Tissues and organs. Histology. Zoological position of 
man. The vertebrate plan of structure. The mammalia. 
Chemical composition of the Body. 1 


CHAPTER II. 

THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS. 

The properties of the living Body. Physiological properties. Cells. 

Cell division. Indirect, karyokinetic or mitotic cell division. 
Assimilation; reproduction. Contractility. Irritability. Con¬ 
ductivity. Spontaneity. Protoplasm. The fundamental physi¬ 
ological properties. 15 


CHAPTER III. 

THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE TISSUES AND THE 
PHYSIOLOGICAL DIVISION OF EMPLOYMENTS. 

Development. The physiological division of labor. Classification 
of the tissues. Undifferentiated tissues. Supporting tissues. 
Nutritive tissues. Storage tissues. Irritable tissues. Coordi¬ 
nating and automatic tissues. Motor tissues. Conductive 
tissues. Protective tissues. Reproductive tissues. Organs. 
Physiological mechanisms. Anatomical systems. The Body 
as a working whole. 29 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE INTERNAL MEDIUM. 

The external medium. The internal medium. The blood. The 


lymph. 
lvmDh . 


Histology of blood. Blood crystals. Histology of 


40 







X 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER Y. 


THE CLOTTING OF BLOOD. 

PAGE 

Coagulation of the blood. Cause of coagulation. Whipped blood. 

The buffy coat. The source of blood fibrin. Artificial clot. 
Fibrin ferment. Proximate causes of normal blood coagulation. 
Relation of the blood-vessels to coagulation. Chemical com¬ 
position of the blood. Quantity of blood. The life-history of 
the blood-corpuscles. Chemical composition of lymph. 51 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE SKELETON. 

Exoskeleton and endoskeleton. The bony skeleton. Segmentation 
of the skeleton. Homologies of the bones of the anterior and 
posterior limbs. Peculiarities of the human skeleton. 63 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF BONE. JOINTS. 

Gross structure of the bones. Microscopic structure of bone. Chem¬ 
ical composition of bone. Articulations. Joints. Hygiene of 
the joints.. 85 


CHAPTER VIII. 

CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 

Temporary and permanent cartilages. Varieties of cartilage. The 
connective tissues. Elastic cartilage and fibro-cartilage. Ho¬ 
mologies of the supporting tissues. Hygiene of the developing 
skeleton. Adipose tissue. 98 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. 

Motion in animals and plants. Amoeboid cells. Ciliated cells. The 
muscles. Histology of striated muscle. Structure of un- 
striated muscular tissue. Cardiac muscular tissue. The chem¬ 
istry of muscular tissue. Beef-tea and Liebig’s extract. 109 

CHAPTER X. 

THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 

Contractility. Irritability. A simple muscular contraction. Phys¬ 
iological tetanus. Causes affecting degree of contraction. 
Measure of muscular work. Muscular elasticity. Electrical 
currents of muscle. Secondary contraction. Secondary tetanus. 
Source of muscular energy. Physiology of plain muscular 
tissue.. 127 








CONTENTS. 


Xl 


CHAPTER XI. 

MOTION AND LOCOMOTION. HYGIENE OF MUSCLES. 

Special physiology of the muscles. Levers in the Body. Postures. 
Walking. Running. Hygiene of muscles. Exercise. Train¬ 
ing.144 

CHAPTER XII. 

ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

Nerve-trunks. Nerve-centres. Cerebro-spinal centre and its mem¬ 
branes. Spinal cord. Spinal nerves. Brain. Cranial nerves. 
Sympathetic system. Sporadic ganglia. Histology of nerve- 
fibres. Histology of nerve-cells. Neuroglia. Histology of 
spinal cord. Structure of a spinal ganglion. 158 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

The properties of the nervous system. Functions of nerve-centres 
and nerve-trunks. Excitant and inhibitory nerves. Classifica¬ 
tion of nerve-fibres. Electrical phenomena of nerves. Stimuli 
of nerve-fibres. General nerve stimuli. Special nerve stimuli. 
Specific nerve energies. Proof that all nerve-fibres are physio¬ 
logically alike. The nature of a nervous impulse. Rate of trans¬ 
mission of a nervous impulse. Functions of special nerve roots. 
Cranial nerves. Intercommunication of nerve-centres. Degen¬ 
eration of nerve-fibres when separated from their centre... 186 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE ANATOMY OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 

General statement. Position of heart. Membranes of heart. Anat¬ 
omy of heart. Valves of heart. The arterial system. Aorta 
and its branches. The capillaries. The veins. The pulmo¬ 
nary circulation. The portal circulation. Arterial and venous 
blood. Structure of the arteries, of the capillaries, and of the 
veins...211 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE WORKING OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS . 

The beat of the heart. Cardiac impulse. Use of papillary muscles. 
Sounds of the heart. A cardiac cycle. Work done by the heart. 

The circulation in the blood-vessels. Conversion of intermit¬ 
tent into a continuous flow.227 

CHAPTER XVI. 

ARTERIAL PRESSURE. THE PULSE. 

Weber’s schema. Arterial pressure. The pulse. The rate of the 
blood flow. Secondary causes of the circulation. Aspiration 
of the thorax. Proofs of the circulation of the blood.240 










Xll 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE NERVES OF THE HEART AND SOME PHYSIOLOGICAL 
PECULIARITIES OF CARDIAC MUSCLE. 

PAGE 

The coordination of heart and blood-vessels. Physiological peculi¬ 
arities of cardiac muscle. The beat of the frog’s heart. Heart¬ 
beat not tetanic. Ventricular contraction always maximal. 
Extrinsic nerves of mammalian heart. Cardio-inhibitory fibres. 

The arterial manometer. The cardio-inhibitory centre. The 
cardio-accelerator nerves. The influence of temperature 
changes and of calcium salts on the heart-beat.253 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE VASO-MOTOR NERVES AND NERVE-CENTRES. 

The nerves of the blood-vessels. Vaso-constrictor nerves. Vaso¬ 
constrictor centre. Blushing. Taking cold. Vaso-dilator 
nerves and centre. Vascular phenomena of inflammation ..... 273 

CHAPTER XIX, 

THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 

Organs of secretion. Glands. Physical processes in secretion. 
Chemical processes of secretion. Mode of activity of secretory 
cells. Influence of nervous system on secretion. Secretion by 
the submaxillary and parotid glands...282 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE BODY. 

The material losses of the Body. The losses of the Body in energy. 

The conservation of energy. Potential and kinetic energy. The 
energy of chemical affinity. Relation between matters removed 
from the Body and energy spent by it. Conditions of oxidation 
in the living Body. The fuel of the Body. Utilization of en¬ 
ergy in the living body.... 299 

CHAPTER XXI. 

FOODS. 

Foods as tissue-formers. The food of plants. Non-oxidizable foods. 
Definition of foods. Conditions which a food must fulfil. Pro- 
teid or albuminous alimentary principles. Albuminoid or gela- 
tinoid alimentary principles. Hydrocarbons. Carbohydrates. 
Inorganic foods. Mixed foods. Flesh. Eggs. Milk. Veg¬ 
etable foods. Alcohol. Advantage of a mixed diet.313 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 

General arrangement. Subdivisions of alimentary canal. Mouth. 
Teeth. Tongue. Salivary glands. Fauces. Pharynx. CEsoph- 








CONTENTS . 


xiii 

PAGE 

agus. Stomach. Small intestine. Large intestine. Liver. 
Pancreas. Blood-vessels of alimentary canal, liver, spleen, and 
pancreas. Blood-vessels of the alimentary canal...328 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM AND THE DUCTLESS GLANDS. 

Lymphatics or absorbents. Structure of lymph vessels. Thoracic 
duct. Serous cavities. Lymphoid or adenoid tissue. Lym¬ 
phatic glands. Movement of lymph. Ductless glands. Spleen. 
Thyroid. Thymus. Pituitary body. Supra-renals.. 349 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

DIGESTION. 

The object of digestion. Saliva. Amylolytic action. Deglutition. 
Gastric juice. Gastric digestion. Chyle. Pancreatic secretion. 
Trypsin. Bile. Bile tests of Pettenkofer and Gmelin. Intesti¬ 
nal secretions or succus entericus. Intestinal digestion. Ab¬ 
sorption from small intestine. Digestion in large intestine. 
Digestion of an ordinary meal. Dyspepsia. Movements of the 
intestines. 361 


CHAPTER XXV. 

THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 

Respiratory organs. Air-passages and lungs. Trachea and bronchi. 
Structure of lungs. Respiratory movements. Anatomy of 
thorax. Expiration. Forced respiration. Respiratory sounds. 
Capacity of lungs. Hygiene of respiration. Aspiration of 
thorax. Influence of respiratory movements upon the blood 
circulation. Influence of respiratory movements on lymph-flow 380 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 

Changes produced in air by being once breathed. Ventilation. 
Changes undergone by the blood in the lungs. The blood 
gases. The laws governing the absorption of gases by a liquid. 

The absorption of oxygen by the blood. The oxygen inter¬ 
changes in the blood. The carbon dioxide of the blood. Inter¬ 
nal respiration.. 398 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE NERVOUS FACTORS OF THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 

ASPHYXIA. 

The respiratory centre. The rhythm of respiratory discharges. Re¬ 
lation of pneumogastric nerves to respiratory centre. Expiratory 
centre. Asphyxia. Carbon-monoxide haemoglobin. The phe¬ 
nomena of asphyxia. Modified respiratory movements. 414 







XIV 


CONTEXTS. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


THE KIDNEYS AND THE SKIN. 

PAGE 

General arrangement of the urinary organs. Naked eye structure of 
kidneys. Minute structure of the kidney. Blood-flow 
through kidney. Renal secretion. Secretory functions of dif¬ 
ferent parts of an uriniferous tubule. Excretion of urea. In¬ 
fluence of renal blood-flow on quantity of urine. The skin. 

The epidermis. The corium or cutis vera. Hairs. Nails. 
Glands of the skin. Secretions of the skin. Hygiene of the 
skin. Bathing. . 427 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

NUTRITION . 

The problems of animal nutrition. The seat of oxidations in the 
Body. Tissue-building and energy-yielding foods. Source of 
the energy expended in muscular work. Luxus consumption. 
Antecedents of urea. Circulating and fixed proteid. The stor¬ 
age tissues. Glycogen. Diabetes. Fats. Dietetics. 451 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE PRODUCTION AND REGULATION OF THE HEAT OF THE BODY. 

Cold and warm-blooded animals. The temperature of the Body. 

The maintenance of an average temperature. Local tempera¬ 
tures. Thermogenic nerves. Fever or pyrexia. Clothing.... 477 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

SENSATION AND SENSE ORGANS. 

The subjective functions of the nervous system. Common sensa¬ 
tion and organs of special sense. Peripheral reference of sensa¬ 
tions. Differences between sensations. Essential structure of 
a sense organ. Modality of sensations. The psycho-physical 
law. Perceptions. Illusions. . 488 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 

The essential structure of an eye. The appendages of the eye. The 
lachrymal apparatus. The muscles of the eye. Anatomy of 
the eyeball. Optic nerves, commissure, and tracts. The retina. 
Refracting media of the eye. The ciliary muscle. Properties 
of light. Refraction of light. Accommodation. Short sight 
and long sight. Hygiene of the eyes. Optical defects of the eye 504 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 

The excitation of the visual apparatus. Vision purple. Intensity 
of visual sensations. Duration of luminous sensations. Local 





CONTENTS. 


XV 


. . PAGE 

izing power of retina. Color vision. Color blindness. Fatigue 
of retina. Contrasts. Hering’s theory of vision. Visual per¬ 
ceptions. Single vision with two eyes. Perception of solidity. 
Stereoscope. Perception of shine. 530 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE EAR AND HEARING. 

The external ear. The tympanum. Eustachian tube. Auditory 
ossicles. Internal ear. Bony labyrinth. Membranous laby¬ 
rinth. Organ of Corti. Nerve endings in semicircular canals 
and vestibule. Loudness, pitch, and timbre of sounds. Pen¬ 
dular vibrations. Composition of vibrations. Sympathetic 
resonance. Functions of tympanic membrane. Functions of 
auditory ossicles. Function of the cochlea Function of the 
vestibule and semicircular canals. Auditory perceptions. 557 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

TOUCH. TEMPERATURE SENSATIONS. PAIN. COMMON SENSATIONS. 
SMELL. TASTE. THE MUSCULAR SENSE. 

Nerve endings in the skin. Tactile cells. End bulbs. Tactile 
corpuscles. Pacinian bodies. Touch or the pressure sense. 

The localizing power of the skin. The temperature sense. 
Comparison of tactile and temperature sensations. Pain and 
common sensibility. Common sensations. Hunger and thirst. 
Smell. Taste. Muscular sense.576 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 

The special physiology of nerve-centres. Conduction in the spinal 
cord. Ascending and descending tracts of degeneration. The 
spinal cord as a reflex centre. The spinal reflex movements of 
the frog. Disorderly reflexes. The least-resistance hypothesis. 

The inhibition of reflexes. Psychical activities of the cord. 
Reflex time. 594 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 

The functions of the brain in general. The medulla oblongata. 
Cerebellum and pons Varolii. Equilibrium sensations. Mid¬ 
brain. Forebrain. Anatomical connections of cerebral convo¬ 
lutions. Functions of cerebral cortex. Cerebral localization. 
Aphasia. Mental habits.609 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

VOICE AND SPEECH. 

Voice. The larynx. The vocal cords. Muscles of the larynx. 

Vowels. Consonants...633 








XVI 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

REPRODUCTION. 

PAGE 

Reproduction in general. Sexual reproduction. Male reproductive 
organs. Seminal fluid. Female reproductive organs. Histol¬ 
ogy of ovary. The mammalian ovum. Maturation of the ovum. 
Ovulation. Menstruation. Fertilization. Pregnancy. Intra¬ 
uterine nutrition of embryo. Parturition. Lactation. Puberty. 

The stages of life. Death... 644 






THE HUMAN BODY. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE GENERAL STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE 
HUMAN BODY. 

Definitions. The living Human Body may be considered 
from either of two aspects. Its structure may be especially 
examined, and the forms, connections and mode of growth of 
its parts be studied, as also the resemblances or differences in 
such respects which appear when it is compared with other 
animal bodies. Or the living Body may be more especially 
studied as an organism presenting definite properties and 
performing certain actions; and then its parts will be investi¬ 
gated with a view to discovering what duty, if any, each ful¬ 
fils. The former group of studies constitutes the science of 
Anatomy, and in so far as it deals with the Human Body 
alone, of Human Anatomy; while the latter, the science con¬ 
cerned with the uses—or in technical language the functions 
—of each part is known as Physiology. Closely connected 
with physiology is the science of Hygiene , which is concerned 
with the conditions which are favorable to the healthy action 
of the various parts of the Body; while the activities and 
structure of the diseased body form the subject-matters of 
the sciences of Pathology and Pathological Anatomy. 

Tissues and Organs. Histology. Examined merely from 
the outside our Bodies present a considerable complexity of 
structure. We easily recognize distinct parts as head, neck, 
trunk and limbs; and in these again smaller constituent 
parts, as eyes, nose, ears, mouth; arm, forearm, hand; thigh, 
leg and foot. We can, with such an external examination, 
go even farther and recognize different materials as entering 
into the formation of the larger parts. Skin, hair, nails and 
teeth are obviously different substances; simple examination 



2 


THE HUMAN BOD Y. 


by pressure proves that internally there are harder and softer 
solid parts; while the blood that flows from a cut finger shows 
that liquid constituents also exist in the Body. The concep¬ 
tion of complexity which may be thus arrived at from exter¬ 
nal observation of the living, is greatly extended by dissection 
of the dead Body, which makes manifest that it consists of a 
great number of diverse parts or organs , which in turn are 
built up of a limited number of materials; the same material 
often entering into the composition of many different organs. 
These primary building materials are known as the tissues, 
and that branch of anatomy which deals with the characters 
of the tissues and their arrangement in various organs is 
known as Histology; or, since it is mainly carried on with the 
aid of the microscope, as Microscopic Anatomy. If, with the 
poet, we compare the Body to a house, we may go on to liken 
the tissues to the bricks, stone, mortar, wood, iron, glass and 
so on, used in building; and then walls and floors, stairs and 
windows, formed by the combination of these, would answer 
to anatomical organs. 

Zoological Position of Man. External examination of the 
human Body shows also that it presents certain resemblances 
to the bodies of many other animals: head and neck, trunk 
and limbs, and various minor parts entering into them, are 
not at all peculiar to it. Closer study and the investigation 
of internal structure demonstrates further that these resem¬ 
blances are in many cases not superficial only, but that our 
Bodies may be regarded as built upon a plan common to them 
and the bodies of many other creatures: and it soon becomes 
further apparent that this resemblance is greater between the 
Human Body and the bodies of ordinary four-footed beasts, 
than between it and the bodies of birds, reptiles or fishes. 
Hence, from a zoological point of view, man’s Body marks 
him out as belongingto the group of Mammalia (see Zoology), 
which includes all animals in which the female suckles the 
young ; and among mammals the anatomical resemblances 
are closer and the differences less between man and certain 
apes than between man and the other mammals; so that 
zoologists still, with Linnaeus, include man with the monkeys 
and apes in one subdivision of the Mammalia, known as the 
Primates. That civilized man is mentally far superior to 
any other animal is no valid objection to such a classification, 
for zoological groups are defined by anatomical and not by 



GENERAL STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION. 


3 


physiological characters; and mental traits, since we know 
that their manifestation depends npon the structural integ¬ 
rity of certaih organs, are especially phenomena of function 
and therefore not available for purposes of zoological ar¬ 
rangement. 

As man walks erect with the head upward, while the great 
majority of Mammals go on all fours with the head forward 
and the back upward, and various apes adopt intermediate 
positions, confusion is apt to arise in considering correspond¬ 
ing parts in man and other animals unless a precise mean¬ 
ing be given to such terms as “anterior” and “posterior.” 
Anatomists therefore give those words definite arbitrary sig¬ 
nifications. The head end is always anterior whatever the 
natural position of the animal, and the opposite end posterior; 
the belly side is spoken of as ventral, and the opposite side as 
dorsal; right and left of course present no difficulty: the 
terms cephalic and caudal as equivalent, respectively, to ante¬ 
rior and posterior, are sometimes used. Moreover, that end 
of a limb nearer the trunk is spoken of as proximal with refer¬ 
ence to the other or distal end. The words upper and lower 
may be conveniently used for the relative position of parts in 
the natural standing position of the animal. 

The Vertebrate Plan of Structure. Neglecting such 
merely apparent differences as arise from the differences of 
normal posture above pointed out, we find that man’s own 
zoological class, the Mammals, differs very widely in its broad 
structural plan from the groups including sea-anemones, in¬ 
sects or oysters, but agrees in many points with the groups of 
fishes, amphibians, reptiles and birds. These four are there¬ 
fore placed with man and all other Mammals in one great 
division of the animal kingdom known as the Vertebrata. 
The main anatomical character of all vertebrate animals is 
the presence in the trunk of the body of two cavities, a dorsal 
and a ventral, separated by a solid partition; in the adults of 
nearly all vertebrate animals a hard axis, the vertebral column 
(backbone or spine), develops in this partition and forms a 
central support for the rest of the body (Fig. 2, ee). The 
dorsal cavity is continued through the neck, when there is 
one, into the head, and there widens out. The bony axis is 
also continued through the neck and extends into the head 
in a modified form. The ventral cavity, on the other hand, 
is confined to the trunk. It contains the main organs con- 


4 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


nected with the blood-flow and is often called the hcemal 
cavity. 

Upon the ventral side of the head is the mouth-opening 
leading into a tube, the alimentary canal, f 9 which passes 
back through the neck and trunk and opens again on the 
outside at the posterior part of the latter. In its passage 
through the trunk-region this canal lies in the ventral cavity. 

The Mammalia. In many vertebrate animals the ven¬ 
tral cavity is not subdivided, but in the Mammalia it is; a 



Fig. 1.—The Body opened from the front to show the contents of its ventral 
cavity, lu, lungs; h, heart, partly covered by other things; le, le\ right and left 
liver-lobes respectively ; ma, stomach ; ne , the great omentum, a membrane con¬ 
taining fat which hangs down from the posterior border of the stomach and covers 
the intestines. 

membranous transverse partition, the midriff or diaphragm 
(Fig. 1 , z), separating it into an anterior chest or thoracic 








GENERAL STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION. 


5 


cavity , and a posterior or abdominal cavity . The alimentary 
canal and whatever else passes from one of these cavities to 
the other must therefore perforate 
the diaphragm. 

In the chest, besides part of the 
alimentary canal, lie important or¬ 
gans, the heart, h, and lungs, lu; 
the heart being on the ventral side 
of the alimentary canal. The ab¬ 
dominal cavity is mainly occupied by 
the alimentary canal and organs con¬ 
nected with it and concerned in the 
digestion of food, as the stomach, 
ma , the liver, le , the pancreas, and 
the intestines. Among the other 
more prominent organs in it are the 
kidneys and the spleen. 

In the dorsal or neural cavity lie 
the brain and spinal cord , the former 
occupying its anterior enlargement 
in the head. Brain and spinal cord 
together form the cerebro-spinal 
nervous centre; in addition to this 
there are found in the ventral cavity 
a number of small nerve-centres 
united together by connecting cords, 



and with their offshoots forming the 


Fig. 2.—Diagrammatic longi¬ 
tudinal section of the body, a, 
the neural tube, with its upper 


sympathetic nervous system. 

The walls of the three main cavi- in tJ ? e f kull -cavity 

at a'; N, the spinal cord; N\ 

ties are lined by smooth, moist j£ rain J 1 ,/*_• vertebrae form- 
serous membranes. 
dorsal cavity is the arachnoid; that 
lining the chest the pleura; that 
lining the abdomen the peritoneum; 
the abdominal cavity is in conse¬ 
quence often called the peritoneal 

cavity. Externally the walls of these IkwnZtibS Ss 

cavities are covered by the skin, through the abdominal cavity 
J 7 to the posterior opening of the 

which consists of two layers : an outer alimentary canal, 
horny layer called the epidermis, which is constantly being 
shed on the surface and renewed from below; and a deeper 
layer, called the dermis and containing blood, which the 


. ing the solid partition between 

That lining the the dorsal and ventral cavities; 

6, the pleural, and c, the abdom¬ 
inal division of the ventral cav¬ 
ity, separated from one another 
by the diaphragm, d ; i, the 
nasal, and o, the mouth cham¬ 
ber, opening behind into the 
pharynx, from which one tube 
leads to the lungs, l, and another 
to the stomach, /; h, the heart; 
k, a. kidnev; s, the sympathetic 


6 


Tim HUMAN BODY. 


epidermis does not. Between the skin and the lining serous 
membranes are bones , muscles (the lean of meat), and a great 
number of other structures which we shall have to consider 
hereafter. All cavities inside the body, as the alimentary 
canal and the air-passages, which open directly or indirectly 
on the surface are lined by soft and moist prolongations of 
the skin known as mucous membranes. In these two layers 
are found as in the skin, but the superficial bloodless one is 
called epithelium and the deeper vascular one corium. 

Diagrammatically we may represent the Human Body 
in longitudinal section as in Fig. 2, where aa ' is the dorsal 
or neural cavity , and b and c, respectively, the thoracic and 
abdominal subdivisions of the ventral cavity; d represents 
the diaphragm separating them; ee is the vertebral column 
with its modified prolongation into the head beneath the 
anterior enlargement of the dorsal cavity; / is the ali¬ 
mentary canal opening in front through the nose, ?*, and 
mouth, o ; h is the heart, l a lung, s the sympathetic nervous 
system, and k a kidney. 

A transverse section through the chest is represented by the 
diagram Fig. 3, where x is the neural canal containing the 
spinal cord. In the thoracic cavity are seen the heart, h, 



Fig. 3.—A diagrammatic section across the Body in the chest region, x , the 
dorsal tube, which contains the spinal cord; the black mass surrounding it is a 
vertebra; a , the gullet, a part of the alimentary canal; h , the heart; sy , sympa¬ 
thetic nervous system; ll, lungs; the dotted lines around them are the pleurae; rr, 
ribs; st , the breast-bone. 

the lungs, ll, part of the alimentary canal, a, and the sympa¬ 
thetic nerve-centres, sy ; the dotted line on each side covering 
the inside of the chest-wall and the outside of the lung 
represents the pleura. 

Sections through corresponding parts of any other Mam¬ 
mal would agree in all essential points with those represented 
in Figs. 2 and 3. 



GENERAL STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION. 


7 


The Limbs. The limbs present no such arrangement of 
cavities on each side of a bony axis as is seen in the trunk. 
They have an axis formed at different parts of one or more 
bones (as seen at U and R in Fig. 4, which represents a cross- 
section of the forearm near the elbow-joint), but around this 
are closely-packed soft parts, chiefly muscles, and the whole 
is enveloped in skin. The only cavities in the limbs are 
branching tubes which are filled with liquids during life, 
either blood or a watery-looking fluid known as lymph. These 
tubes, the blood and lymph vessels respectively, are not, how- 



Fig. 4.— A section across the forearm a short distance below the elbow-joint. R 
and U, its two supporting bones, the radius and ulna; e, the epidermis, and d, the 
dermis of the skin; the latter is continuous below with bands of connective tissue, 
<s, which penetrate between and invest the muscles, which are indicated by num¬ 
bers ; n n. nerves and vessels. 

ever, characteristic of the limbs, for they are present in 
abundance in the dorsal and ventral cavities and in their 
walls. 

Chemical Composition of the Body. In addition to the 
study of the Body as composed of tissues and organs which 
are optically recognizable, we may consider it as composed of 
a number of different chemical substances. This branch of 
knowledge, which is still very incomplete, really presents two 
classes of problems. On the one hand we may limit ourselves 
to the examination of the chemical substances which exist in 
or may be derived from the dead Body, or, if such a thing 
were possible, from the living Body entirely at rest; such a 
study is essentially one of structure and may be called Chem¬ 
ical Anatomy. But as long as the Body is alive it is the seat 
of constant chemical transformations in its material, and 
these arc inseparably connected with its functions, the great 
majority of which are in the long-run dependent upon chem¬ 
ical changes. From this point of view, then, the chemical 
study of the Body presents physiological problems, and it is 
usual to include all the facts known as to the chemical com¬ 
position and metamorphoses of living matter under the name 


8 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


of Physiological Chemistry. For the present we may confine 
ourselves to the more important substances derived from or 
known to exist in the Body, leaving questions concerning the 
chemical changes taking place within it for consideration 
along with those functions which are performed in connection 
with them. 

Elements Composing the Body. Of the elements known 
to chemists only sixteen have been found to take part in the 
formation of the human Body. These are carbon, hydrogen, 
nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorine, fluorine, 
silicon, sodium, potassium, lithium, calcium, magnesium, iron 
and manganese. Copper and lead have sometimes been found 
in small quantities, but are probably accidental and occa¬ 
sional. 

Uncombined Elements. Only a very small number of the 
above elements exist in the Body uncombined. Oxygen is 
found in small quantity dissolved in the blood; but even there 
most of it is in a state of loose chemical combination. It is 
also found in the cavities of the lungs and alimentary canal, 
being derived from the inspired air or swallowed with food 
and saliva; but while contained in these spaces it can hardly 
be said to form a part of the Body. Nitrogen also exists un¬ 
combined in the lungs and alimentary canal, and in small 
quantity in solution in the blood. Free hydrogen has also 
been found in the alimentary canal, being there evolved by 
the fermentation of certain foods. 

Chemical Compounds. The number of these which may 
be obtained from the Body is very great; but with regard to 
very many of them we do not know that the form in which 
we extract them is really that in which the elements they 
contain were united while in the living Body; since the 
methods of chemical analysis are such as always break down the 
more complex forms of living matter and leave us only its de¬ 
bris for examination. We know in fact, tolerably accurately, 
what compounds enter the Body as food and what finally 
leave it as waste; but the intermediate conditions of the ele¬ 
ments contained in these compounds during their sojourn 
inside the Body we know very little about; more especially 
their state of combination during that part of their stay when 
they do not exist dissolved in the bodily liquids, but form 
part of a solid living tissue. 

For present purposes the chemical compounds existing in 


GENERAL STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION. y 

or derived from the Body may be classified as organic and in¬ 
organic, and the former be subdivided into those which con¬ 
tain nitrogen and those which do not. 

Nitrogenous or Azotized. Organic Compounds. These 
fall into several main groups: proteids, peptones, albuminoids, 
enzymes, crystalline substances, and coloring matters. 

Proteids are by far the most characteristic substances 
obtained from the Body, since they are only known as exist¬ 
ing in or derived from living things, either animals or plants. 
The type of this class of bodies may be found in the white of 
an egg, where it is stored up as food for the developing chick; 
from this typical form, which is called egg-albumin, the pro¬ 
teids in general are often called albuminous bodies. Each 
of them contains carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur and 
nitrogen united to form a very complex molecule, and although 
different members of the family differ from one another in 
minor points they all agree in their broad features and have 
a similar percentage composition. The latter in different 
examples varies within the following limits: 


Carbon. 50 to 55 per cent. 

Hydrogen. 6.8 to 7.3 “ 

Oxygen. 22 8 to 24.1 “ 

Nitrogen. 15.4 to 18.2 “ 

Sulphur. 0.4 to 5.0 “ 


In addition a small quantity of ash is usually left when a 
proteid is burnt. 

Proteids are recognized by the following characters: 

1. Boiled, either in the solid state or in solution, with strong 
nitric acid they give a yellow liquid which becomes orange on 
neutralization with ammonia. This is the xanthoproteic test. 

2. Boiled with a solution containing subnitrate and per- 
nitrate of mercury they give a pink precipitate, or, if in very 
small quantity, a pink-colored solution. This is known as 
Millon’s test. 

3. If a solution containing a proteid be strongly acidulated 
with acetic acid and be boiled after the addition of an equal 
bulk of a saturated watery solution of sodium sulphate, the 
proteid will be precipitated. 

Among the more important proteids obtained from the 
Human Body are the following: 

Serum-albumin. This exists in solution in the blood and 







THE HUMAN BODY. 


10 

is very like egg-albumin in its properties. It is coagulated 
(like the white of an egg) when boiled, and then passes into 
the state of coagulated proteid which is, unlike the original 
serum-albumin, insoluble in dilute acids or alkalies or in 
water containing neutral salts in solution. All other proteids 
can by appropriate treatment be turned into coagulated 
proteid. 

Fibrin. This forms in blood when it “ clots,” either in¬ 
side or outside of the Body; it is insoluble in water and dilute 
acids or alkalies; soluble in strong acids and alkalies and, 
though slowly, in ten per cent neutral saline solutions. 

Myosin. This is derived from the muscles, in which it 
develops and solidifies after death, causing the “ death-stiffen- 
ing.” 

Globulin exists in the red globules of the blood and dis¬ 
solved in some other liquids of the body. In the blood-cor¬ 
puscles it is combined with a colored non-proteid substance 
to form haemoglobin , which is crystallizable. Allied sub¬ 
stances, paraglobulin and fibrinogen , are found dissolved in 
the blood-liquid. When blood clots the fibrinogen gives rise 
to fibrin. 

Casein or, as it is better named, caseinogen exists in 
milk. Its solutions do not coagulate spontaneously or, like 
that of serum-albumin, on boiling. When milk turns sour on 
keeping, or when it is very slightly acidulated with dilute 
acetic acid, the casein is precipitated. The clot or curd which 
forms when milk is gently warmed with gastric juice or with 
rennet, is also derived from caseinogen; it differs from true 
casein and is named tyrein: it is the chief constituent of 
cheese. 

Peptones. These are formed in the alimentary canal by 
the action of some of the digestive liquids upon the proteids 
swallowed as food. They contain the same elements as the 
proteids and give the xantho-proteic and Millon’s reactions, 
but are not precipitated by boiling with acetic acid and 
sodium sulphate. Their great distinctive character is, how¬ 
ever, their diffusibility. The proteids proper will not dialyze 
(see Physics), but the peptones in solution pass readily 
through moist animal membranes. 

Albuminoids or Gelatinoids. These contain carbon, 
hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, but rarely any sulphur. Like 
the proteids, the nearest chemical allies of which they seem 


GENERAL STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION. 11* 

to be, they are only known in or derived from living beings. 
Gelatin , obtained from bones and ligaments by boiling, is a 
typical albuminoid; as is chondrin , which is obtained similarly 
from gristle. Mucin , which gives their glairy tenacious char¬ 
acter to the secretions of the mouth and nose, is another 
albuminoid. 

Enzymes or Soluble Ferments are a group of substances 
which seem to be allied in chemical composition to the true 
proteids, but it is so difficult to be sure of the purity of any 
specimen that their composition is still in doubt. The 
enzymes have the power, even when present in very small 
quantity, of bringing about extensive changes in other sub¬ 
stances, and they are not themselves necessarily used up or 
destroyed in the process. Many enzymes of great physiologi¬ 
cal importance exist in the digestive fluids and play a part in 
fitting food for absorption from the alimentary canal. For 
example, pepsin found in the gastric juice and trypsin found 
in the pancreatic secretion convert, under suitable conditions, 
albuminous substances into peptones; and ptyalin, found in 
the saliva, converts starch into sugar. Other ferments 
cause the clotting of various animal liquids: rennin from the 
gastric juice clots the caseinogen of milk preparatory to its 
digestion; and a ferment which forms in drawn blood con¬ 
verts fibrinogen into fibrin. We shall have occasion later to 
study several enzymes more in detail in connection with their 
physiological uses. 

Crystalline Nitrogenous Substances. These are a heter¬ 
ogeneous group, the great majority of them being materials 
which have done their work in the Body and are about to be 
got rid of. Nitrogen enters the Body in foods for the most 
part in the chemically complex form of some proteid. In the 
vital processes these proteids are broken down into simpler 
substances, their carbon being partly combined with oxygen 
and passed out through the lungs as carbon dioxide; their 
hydrogen is similarly in large part combined with oxygen and 
passed out as water; while their nitrogen, with some carbon 
and hydrogen and oxygen, is usually passed out in the form 
of a crystalline compound, containing what chemists call an 
“ ammonium residue.” Of these the most important is urea 
(Carbamide, 2NH 2 ,CO), which is eliminated through the kid¬ 
neys. Uric acid is another nitrogenous waste product, and 
many others, such as kreatin and leucin , seem to be inter- 


12 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


mediate stages between the proteids which enter the body and 
the urea and uric acid which leave it. 

In the bile or gall, two crystallizable nitrogen-containing 
bodies, glycocholic and taurocholic acid, are found combined 
with soda. 

Nitrogenous Coloring Matters. These form an artificial 
group whose constitution and origin are ill known. Among 
the most important are the following: 

Hcematin, derived from the red corpuscles of the blood in 
which a residue of it is combined with a proteid residue to 
form haemoglobin. 

Bilirubin and biliverdin, which exist in the bile; the 
former predominating in the bile of man and of carnivorous 
animals and giving it a reddish-yellow color, while biliverdin 
predominates in the bile of Herbivora, which is green. 

Non-Nitrogenous Organic Compounds. These may be 
conveniently grouped as hydrocarbons or fatty bodies; carbo¬ 
hydrates or amyloids ; and certain non-azotized acids. 

Fats. The fats all contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, 
the oxygen being present in small proportion as compared 
with the hydrogen. Three fats occur in the Body in large 
quantities, viz.: palmatin (C 61 H 98 O e ), stearin (C 67 H no 0 6 ), 
and olein (C 67 H 104 O 6 ). The two former when pure are solid 
at the temperature of the Body, but in it are mixed with 
olein (which is liquid) in such proportions as to be kept fluid. 
The total quantity of fat in the Body is subject to great vari¬ 
ations, but its average quantity in a man weighing 75 kilo¬ 
grams (165 pounds) is about 2.75 kilograms (6 pounds). 

Each of these fats when heated with a caustic alkali, in 
the presence of water, breaks up into a fatty acid ( stearic , 
palmitic or oleic as the case may be), and glycerin . The 
fatty acid unites with the alkali present to form a soap. 

Carbohydrates. These also contain carbon, hydrogen 
and oxygen, but there is one atom of oxygen present for 
every two of hydrogen in the molecule of each of them. 
Chemically they are related to starch. The more important 
of them found in the Body are the following: 

Glycogen (C fi H J0 O 5 ), found in large quantities in the liver, 
where it seems to be a reserve of material answering to the 
starch stored up by many plants. It exists in smaller quanti¬ 
ties in the muscles. 

Glucose, or grape-sugar (C 8 H 12 0 6 ), which exists in the 


GENERAL STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION. 13 


liver in small quantities; also in the blood and lymph. It is 
largely derived from glycogen, which is very readily converted 
into it. 

Lactose , or sugar of milk (C 12 H 22 O u -f- H 2 0), found in 
considerable quantity in milk. 

Inosit (C 6 H 12 0 6 + 2H 2 0), also called muscle-sugar and 
formerly classed in this group, is now known to be chemi¬ 
cally not a real sugar or true carbohydrate. It exists in 
muscles, liver, spleen, kidneys, etc. 

Organic Non-Nitrogenous Acids. Of these the most im¬ 
portant is carbon dioxide (C0 2 ), which is the form in which 
by far the greater part of the carbon taken into the Body 
ultimately leaves it. United with calcium it is found in the 
bones and teeth in large proportion. 

Formic, acetic and butyric acids are also found in the 
Body; stearic, palmitic, and oleic have been above mentioned 
as obtainable from fats. Lactic acid is sometimes found in 
the stomach, and when milk turns sour is formed from lactose. 
A body of the same percentage composition, 0 3 H 6 0 3 ( sarco - 
lactic acid), is formed in muscles when they work or die. 

Glycerin phosphoric acid (C 3 H 9 P0 6 ) is obtained on the de¬ 
composition of lecithin, a complex nitrogenous fat found in 
nervous tissue. 

Inorganic Constituents. Of the simpler substances en¬ 
tering into the structure of the Body the following are the 
most important : 

Water ; in all the tissues in greater or less proportion and 
forming about two thirds of the weight of the whole Body. 
A man weighing 75 kilos (165 lbs.), if completely dried 
would therefore lose about 50 kilos (110 lbs.) from the evapo¬ 
ration of water. Of the constituents of the Body the enamel 
of the teeth contains least water (about 2 per cent), and the 
saliva most (about 99.5 per cent); between these extremes 
are all intermediate steps—bones containing about 22 per cent, 
muscles 75, blood 79. 

Common salt—Sodium chloride —(NaCl); found in all the 
tissues and liquids, and in many cases playing an important 
part in keeping other substances in solution in water. 

Potassium chloride (KC1); in the blood, muscles, nerves 
and most liquids. 

Calcium phosphate (Ca 3 2P0 4 ); in the bones and teeth in 
large quantity. In less proportion in all the other tissues. 


14 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Besides the above, ammonium chloride, sodium and potas¬ 
sium phosphates, magnesium phosphate, sodium sulphate, 
potassium sulphate and calcium fluoride have been obtained 
from the body. 

Uncombined hydrochloric acid (HC1) is found in the 
gastric juice. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS. 

The Properties of the Living Body. When we turn 
from the structure and composition of the living Body to 
consider its powers and properties we meet again with great 
variety and complexity, the most superficial examination be¬ 
ing sufficient to show that its parts are endowed with very 
different faculties. Light falling on the eye arouses in us a 
sensation of sight, but falling on the skin has no such effect; 
pinching the skin causes pain, but pinching a hair or a nail 
does not; when the ears are stopped, sounds arouse in us no 
sensation; we readily recognize, too, hard parts formed for 
support, joints to admit of movements, apertures to receive 
food and others to get rid of waste. We thus perceive that 
different organs of our Bodies have very different endow¬ 
ments and serve for very distinct purposes; and here also 
the study of internal organs shows us that the varieties of 
quality observed on the exterior are but slight indications of 
differences of property which pervade the whole, being some¬ 
times dependent on the specific characters of the tissues con¬ 
cerned and sometimes upon the manner in which these are 
combined to form various organs. Some tissues are solid, 
rigid and of constant shape, as those composing the bones 
and teeth; others, as the muscles, are soft and capable of 
changing their forms; and still others are capable of working 
chemical changes by which such peculiar fluids as the bile 
and the saliva are produced. We find elsewhere a number of 
tissues combined to form a tube adapted to receive food and 
carry it through the Body for digestion, and again similar 
tissues differently arranged to receive the air which we breathe- 
in, and expel it after abstracting part of its oxygen and 
adding to it certain other things; and in the heart and blood¬ 
vessels we find almost the same tissues arranged to propel 
and carry the blood over the whole Body. The working of 

15 


16 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the Body offers clearly even a more complex subject of study 
than its structure. 

Physiological Properties. In common with inanimate 
objects the Body possesses many merely physical properties, 
as weight, rigidity, elasticity, color, and so on; but in addi¬ 
tion to these we find in it while alive many others which it 
ceases to manifest at death. Of these perhaps the power of 
executing spontaneous movements and of maintaining a high 
bodily temperature are the most marked. As long as the 
Body is alive it is warm and, since the surrounding air is 
nearly always cooler, must be losing heat all day long to 
neighboring objects; nevertheless we are at the end of the 
day as warm as at the beginning, the temperature of the 
Body in health not varying much from 37° C. (98.4° F.), so 
that clearly our Bodies must be making heat somehow all 
the time. After death this production of heat ceases and the 
Body cools down to the temperature in its neighborhood; but 
so closely do we associate with it the idea of warmth that 
the sensation experienced on touching a corpse produces so 
powerful an impression as commonly to be described as icy 
cold. The other great characteristic of the living Body is its 
power of executing movements; so long as life lasts it is 
never at rest; even in the deepest slumber the regular breath¬ 
ing, the tap of the heart against the chest-wall, and the beat 
of the pulse tell us that we are watching sleep and not death. 
If to this we add the possession of consciousness by the living 
Body, whether aroused or not by forces immediately acting 
upon sense-organs, we might describe it as a heat-producing, 
moving, conscious organism. 

The production of heat in the Body needs fuel of some 
kind as much as its production in a fire; and every time we 
move ourselves or external objects some of the Body is used 
up to supply the necessary working power, just as some coals 
are burnt in the furnace of an engine for every bit of work it 
does; in the same way every thought that arises in us is ac¬ 
companied with the destruction of some part of the Body. 
Hence these primary actions of keeping warm, moving, and 
being conscious, necessitate many others for the supply of 
new materials to the tissues concerned and for the removal of 
their wastes; still others are necessary to regulate the pro¬ 
duction and loss of heat in accordance with changes in the 
exterior temperature, to bring the moving tissues into rela- 





THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS. 17 


tion with the thinking, and so on. By such subsidiary ar¬ 
rangements the working of the whole Body becomes so com¬ 
plex that it would fill many pages merely to enumerate what 
is known of the duties of its various parts. However, all the 
proper physiological properties depend in ultimate analysis 
on a small number of faculties which are possessed by all 
living things, their great variety in the human Body depend¬ 
ing upon special development and combination in different 
tissues and organs; and before attempting to study them in 
their most complex forms it is advantageous to 
examine them in their simplest and most gen¬ 
eralized manifestations, as exhibited by some of 
the lowest living things or by the simplest con¬ 
stituents of our own Bodies. 

Cells. Among the anatomical elements 
which the histologist meets with as entering into 
the composition of the human Body are minute 
granular masses of a soft consistence, about 
0.012 millimeter ( 20 V 0 of an inch) in diameter 
(Fig. 5, b). Imbedded in each lies a central 
portion, not so granular and therefore different 
in appearance from the rest. These anatomical 
units are known as cells, the granular substance 
being the cell-body and the imbedded clearer por- g* Jg! ,s frora the 
tion the cell-nucleus. Inside the nucleus may 
often be distinguished a still smaller body—the nucleolus . 
Cells of this kind exist in abundance in the blood, where they 
are known as the white blood-corpuscles , and each exhibits of 
itself certain properties which are distinctive of all living 
things as compared with inanimate objects. 

Cell Growth. In the first place, each such cell can take 
up materials from its outside and build them up into its own 
peculiar substance; and this does not occur by the deposit of 
new layers of material like its own on the surface of the cell 
(as a crystal might increase in an evaporating solution of the 
same salt), but in an entirely different way. The cell takes 
up chemical elements, either free or combined in a manner 
different from that in which they exi&t in its own living sub¬ 
stance, and works chemical changes in them by which they 
are made into part and parcel of itself. Moreover^the new 
material thus formed is not deposited, at any rate necessarily 
or always, on the surface of the old, but is laid down in the 



Fig. 5.—Forms 



18 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


substance of the already existing cell among its constituent 
molecules. The new-formed molecules therefore contribute 
to the growth of the cell not by superficial accretion , but by 
interstitial deposit or intussusception. 

Cell Division. The increase of size, which may be brought 
about in the above manner, is not indefinite, but is limited in 
two ways. Alongside of the formation and deposit of new 
material there occurs always in the living cell a breaking 
down and elimination of the old; and when this process 



Fig. 6.—Diagrams illustrating direct cell-division, a, cell, body; b, nucleus; 
c, nucleolus. 


equals the accumulation of new material, as it does in all the 
cells of the Body when they attain a certain size, growth 
of course ceases. In fact the work of the cell increases 
as its mass , and therefore as the cube of its diameter; 
while the receptive powers, dependent primarily upon the 
superficial area, only increase as the square of the diameter. 
The breaking down in the* cell increases when its work 
does, and so comes at last to equal the reception and con¬ 
struction. The second limitation to indefinite growth is 
connected with the power of the cell to give rise to new cells 
by division. 

Until recently it was believed that cell division was in all 
cases a comparatively simple process (Fig. 6). It was thought 
that the nucleus, without any important structural change, 
enlarged somewhat, became elongated, and then divided by 
simple constriction into two equal parts, forming two smaller 
daughter nuclei; and that the rest of the cell then divided, 
its halves arranging themselves around the new nuclei, The 
nucleolus when present was supposed to divide before the 
nucleus. Such a mode of cell multiplication is known as 
direct division: it possibly occurs in some cases, but in the 
great majority of cells division is preceded by marked changes 
in the structure of the nucleus and by a rearrangement of its 
material: such cell division is named indirect, and the attend¬ 
ant nuclear changes are known as the phenomena of karyoki- 
nesis or mitosi* 



THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS. 19 



Indirect, Karyokinetic or Mitotic Cell Division. Before 
attempting to describe the phenomena of indirect cell divi¬ 
sions it is necessary to give some 
account of the structure of a typical 
primitive cell as made out in speci¬ 
mens carefully prepared and studied 
with the highest powers of the 
microscope. The main bulk of the 
cell, surrounding the nucleus, is the a_ 
cell-body , and in some cases is en¬ 
closed in an envelope or sac, which, 

however, when present, plays but a ce if^'/kyak^wasln- f 6°retic£ 
secondary or passive part in cell divi- lum; c. nucleus. « and b together 

rn, „ , T i 1 form the cell-body. 

sion. The cell-body, known also as 

the cell-protoplasm (Fig. 7), consists of a network of extremely 
fine threads, the reticulum or spongioplasm ,the meshes of which 
are occupied by a different substance, the hyaloplasm: the 
proportions of hyaloplasm and spongioplasm vary in different 
cells and often in different parts of the same cell; in fact a 
layer of hyaloplasm unmixed with spongioplasm frequently 
exists on the exterior of the cell, and the hyaloplasm appears 
to be the more immediately concerned in the activities of the 
living cell. In addition there is to be found, imbedded in the 
cell-body and near the nucleus or attached to it, an extremely 
minute particle, the attraction-particle or centrosome, near 
__ which a radial arrangement of the 

cell-substance may often be ob¬ 
served. 

The nucleus (Fig. 8) of a 
resting cell, that is of a cell not 
in process of division, consists of 
an amorphous material ( nucleo¬ 
plasm ) which is perhaps similar 
in composition to the hyaloplasm, 
and a filamentous material, dif¬ 
ferent from spongioplasm, and 
named chromoplasm or Jcaryo- 
plasm . As proved by its behavior 
with staining fluids and other 
reagents karyoplasm is quite different chemically from the 
spongioplasm of the cell-body. One or more granules (nu¬ 
cleoli) which may be found within most nuclei are probably 



Fig. 8.—Diagram of a resting 
nucleus, n, nuclear membrane; b, 
nucleoplasm; c. nucleolus; d. chro- 
mopiasm; e, some of the surround- 
ing protoplasm of the cell, the 
structure of which is not indicated. 








20 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


local accumulations of chromoplasm; a membrane ( nuclear 
membrane ) which surrounds the nucleus of cells not in process 
of division is also probably composed of chromoplasm. 

The first observed step in cell division is binary division of 
the attraction-particle: its halves evolve a set of veiy fine 
achromat in filaments uniting them, so that each half is one of 
the poles of a spindle-shaped collection of fibres, the nuclear 
spindle. Meanwhile the nucleolus and nuclear membrane 
disappear, being probably taken up into the rest of the chro¬ 
moplasm, which now, instead of its original reticular arrange¬ 



ment, takes the form of a single long chromatic filament 
coiled in the nucleoplasm. At one portion of the nucleus 
(pole) the loops of the chromatic filament leave a space free 
from them (Fig. 9, A), and in the neighborhood of this space 
the nuclear spindle is first seen within the nucleus. At the 
opposite side of the nucleus or antipole (Fig. 9, B) the loops 
of the chromatic filament leave no clear space, but cross ir¬ 
regularly. In the next stage the loops at the antipolar end 
break through, and in this way the filament is divided into a 
number of irregular elongated Vs, each with its closed angle 
near the pole and its open end near the antipole. The spindle 
meanwhile passes to the centre of the nucleus and takes a posi¬ 
tion in which its long axis coincides with that joining pole and 
antipole, and then the Vs of chromoplasm become shorter and 
their limbs thicker, and they also shift position so as to group 
themselves radially around the equator of the spindle (A, Fig. 
10) with their angles directed centrally. Each V then di¬ 
vides along its whole length, and one half passes towards the 




THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS. 21 


pole, the other towards the antipole. The whole nucleus 
elongates in the direction of the long axis of the spindle; the 
achromatin filaments disappear, and the nucleus dividing in 



Fig. 10. —Diagrams representing more advanced stages of karyokinesis than those 
illustrated in Fig. 9. a. polar, and e , antipolar end of nuclear spindle; b and c, por¬ 
tions of the chromatic filament; rf, nucleoplasm; /, cell protoplasm with indications 
of a radial arrangement in the neighborhood of the pole and antipole. 

The nuclear spindle is seen to have lengthened and become placed in the centre 
of the nucleus, the pole and antipole of which its ends reach. In A the Vs which 
resulted from divisions of the chromatic filament at its antipolar loops are seen to 
have become much shorter and thicker and to have changed position, so that in¬ 
stead of lying lengthwise in the nucleus, with their points towards the pole, they lie 
equatorially, with their points towards the spindle and their open ends towards the 
periphery of the nucleus. For the sake of clearness only two are represented out 
of the set of them which surrounds the spindle; b is still uncleft; c has nearly com¬ 
pleted its longitudinal division into two Vs, the angle of one of which is commencing 
to travel towards the pole and of the other towards the antipole. In B the splitting 
of the Vs and the progress of their halves towards the ends of the nucleus is more 
advanced. 


the equatorial plane, two nuclei are formed, each with nucleo¬ 
plasm and chromoplasm : the chromoplasm of each is derived, 
as follows from the preceding description, from both polar and 
antipolar regions of the parent nucleus. The chromoplasm in 
each daughter nucleus unites into a single convoluted chro¬ 
matic filament like that represented for the parent nucleus in 
Tig. 9, and this filament breaks up and becomes arranged 
into reticulum, nucleolus and nuclear membrane as in the 
resting cell (Figs. 7 and 8). Around the new nuclei the cell- 
protoplasm rearranges itself and divides to form a new cell-body 
enveloping each; during its rearrangement its material fre¬ 
quently presents a radial structure, the radii converging to¬ 
wards the ends of the nuclear spindle. The poles of the nuclear 
spindle, which it will be remembered represent the halves of 











22 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the original centrosome, probably pass out of the new nuclei 
and become the attraction particles of the new cells. 

The phenomena of karyokinesis show clearly that in spite of 
its small size the animal cell is a complicated structure, made 
up of very distinct parts possessing very distinct properties 
and no doubt very different functions. 

Assimilation: Reproduction. The two powers, that of 
working up into their own substance materials derived from 
outside, known as assimilation , and that of, in one way or an¬ 
other, giving rise to new beings like themselves, known as re¬ 
production, are possessed by all kinds of living beings, whether 
animals or plants. There is, however, this important differ¬ 
ence between the two: the power of assimilation is necessary 
for the maintenance of each individual cell, plant or animal, 
since the already existing living material is constantly break¬ 
ing down and being removed as long as life lasts, and the loss 
must be made good if any of them is to continue its existence. 
The power of reproduction, on the other hand, is necessary 
only for the continuance of the kind or race, and need be, and 
often is,possessed only by some of the individuals composing it. 
Working bees, for example, cannot reproduce their kind, that 
duty being left to the queen-bee and the drones of each hive. 

The breaking down of already existing chemical compounds 
into simpler ones, sometimes called dissimilation, is as inva¬ 
riable in living beings as the building up of new complex mole¬ 
cules referred to above. It is associated with the assumption 
of uncombined oxygen from the exterior, which is then com¬ 
bined directly or indirectly with other elements in the cell, as, 
for example, carbon, giving rise to carbon dioxide, or hydro¬ 
gen, producing water. In this way the molecule in which the 
carbon and hydrogen previously existed is broken down and 
at the same time energy is liberated, which in all cases seems 
to take in part the form of heat just as when coal is burnt in 
a fire, but may be used in part for other purposes, such as pro¬ 
ducing movements. The carbon dioxide is usually got rid 
of by the same mechanism as that which serves to take up the 
oxygen, and these two processes constitute the function of 
respiration which occurs in all living things. Assimilation 
and dissimilation, going on side by side and being to a certain 
extent correlative, are often spoken of together as the process 
of nutrition: the assimilative or chemically constructive pro¬ 
cesses are also named anabolic, and the dissimilative katabolic . 


THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS. 23 


Contractility. Nutrition and (with the above-mentioned 
partial exception) reproduction characterize all living creat¬ 
ures; and both faculties are possessed by the simple nucleated 
cells already referred to as found in our blood. But these 
cells possess also certain other properties which, although not 
so absolutely diagnostic, are yet very characteristic of living 
things. Examined carefully with a microscope in a fresh- 
drawn drop of blood, they exhibit changes of form independent 
of any pressure which might distort them or otherwise mechani¬ 
cally alter their shape. These changes may sometimes show 
themselves as constrictions ultimately leading to the division 
of the cell ; but more commonly (Fig. 15*) they have no such 
result, the cell simply altering its form by drawing in its sub¬ 
stance at one point and thrusting it out at another. The 
portion thus protruded may in turn be drawn in and a pro¬ 
cess be thrown out elsewhere ; or the rest of the cell may col¬ 
lect around it, and a fresh protrusion be then made on the 
same side ; and by repeating this manoeuvre these cells may 
change their place and creep across the field of the micro¬ 
scope. Such changes of form from their close resemblance to 
those exhibited by the microscopic animal known as the 
Amoeba (see Zoology) are called amoeboid , aud the faculty in 
the living cell upon which they depend is known in physiol¬ 
ogy as contractility. It must be borne in mind that physiol¬ 
ogical contractility in this sense is quite different from the 
so-called contractility of a stretched india-rubber band, 
which merely tends to reassume a form from which it has 
previously been forcibly removed. 

Irritability. Another property exhibited by these blood- 
cells is known as irritability. An Amoeba coming into con¬ 
tact with a solid particle calculated to serve it as food will 
throw around it processes of its substance, and gradually 
carry the foreign mass into its own body. The amount of 
energy expended by the animal under these circumstances is 
altogether disproportionate to the force of the external contact. 
It is not that the swallowed mass pushes-in mechanically the 
surface of the Amoeba, or burrows into it, but the mere touch 
arouses in the animal an activity quite disproportionate to the 
exciting force, and comparable to that set free by a spark 
falling into gunpowder or by a slight tap on a piece of gun¬ 
cotton. It is this disproportion between the excitant (known 


P. 48. 



24 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


in Physiology as a stimulus) and the result, which is the es¬ 
sential characteristic of irritability when the term is used in 
a physiological connection. The granular cells of the blood 
can take foreign matters into themselves in exactly the same 
manner as an Amoeba does; and in this and in other ways, as 
by contracting into rigid spheres under the influence of elec¬ 
trical shocks, they show that they also are endowed with irri¬ 
tability. 

Conductivity. Further, when an Amoeba or one of these 
blood-cells comes into contact with a foreign body and pro¬ 
ceeds to draw it into its own substance, the activity excited 
is not merely displayed by the parts actually touched. Dis¬ 
tant parts of the cell also co-operate, so that the influence of 
the stimulus is not local only, but in consequence of it a change 
is brought about in other parts, arousing them. This prop¬ 
erty of transmitting disturbances is known as conductivity. 

Finally, the movements excited are not, as a rule, random. 
They are not irregular convulsions, but are adapted to attain 
a certain end, being so combined as to bring the external par¬ 
ticle into the interior of the cell. This capacity of all the 
parts to work together in definite strength and sequence to 
fulfil some purpose, is known as co-ordination . 

These Properties Characteristic but not Diagnostic. 
These four faculties, irritability, conductivity, contractility 
and co-ordination, are possessed in a high degree by our 
Bodies as a whole. If the inside of the nose be tickled with 
a feather, a sneeze will result. Here the feather-touch (stim¬ 
ulus) has called forth movements which are mechanically 
altogether disproportionate to the energy of the contact, so 
that the living Body is clearly irritable. The movements, 
which are themselves a manifestation of contractility , are not 
exhibited at the point touched, but at more or less distant 
parts, among which those of abdomen, chest and face are 
visible from the exterior ; our Bodies therefore possess physio¬ 
logical conductivity. And finally these movements are not 
random, but combined so as to produce a violent current of 
air through the nose tending to remove the irritating object; 
and in this we have a manifestation of co-ordination. Speak¬ 
ing broadly, these properties are more manifest in animals 
than in plants, though they are by no means absolutely con¬ 
fined to the former. In the sensitive plant touching one leaflet 
will excite regular movements of the whole leaf, and many of 




THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS. 25 


the lower aquatic plants exhibit movements as active as those 
of animals. On the other hand, no one of these four faculties 
is absolutely distinctive of living things in the way that growth 
by intussusception and reproduction are. Irritability is but 
a name for unstable molecular equilibrium, and is as marked 
in nitroglycerin as in any living cells; in the telephone the 
influence of the voice is conducted as a molecular change 
along a wire, and produces results at a distance; and many 
inanimate machines afford examples of the co-ordination of 
movements for the attainment of definite ends. 

Spontaneity. There is, however, one character belonging 
to many of the movements exhibited by amoeboid cells, in 
which they appear at first sight to differ fundamentally from 
the movements of inanimate objects. This character is their 
apparent spontaneity or automaticity. The cells frequently 
change their form independently of any recognizable external 
cause, while a dead mass at rest and unacted on from outside 
remains at rest. This difference is, however, only apparent 
and depends not upon any faculty of spontaneous action pe¬ 
culiar to the living cell, but upon its nutritive powers. It 
can be proved that any system of material particles in equi¬ 
librium and at rest will forever remain so if not acted upon 
by an external force. Such a system can carry on, under cer¬ 
tain conditions, a series of changes when once a start has 
been given; but it cannot initiate them. Each living cell 
in the long-run is but a complex aggregate of molecules, 
composed in their turn of chemical elements, and if we sup¬ 
pose this whole set of atoms at rest in equilibrium at any 
moment, no change can be started in the cell from inside; in 
other words, it will possess no real spontaneity. When, how¬ 
ever, we consider the irritability of amoeboid cells, or, ex¬ 
pressed in mechanical terms, the unstable equilibrium of their 
particles, it becomes obvious that a very slight external cause, 
such as may entirely elude our observation, may serve to set 
going in them a very marked series of changes, just as pressing 
the trigger will fire off a gun. Once the equilibrium of the cell 
has been disturbed, movements either of some of its constitu¬ 
ent molecules or of its whole mass will continue until all the 
molecules have again settled down into a stable state. But 
in living cells the reattainment of this state is commonly in¬ 
definitely postponed by the reception of new particles, food 
in one form or another, from the exterior. The nearest ap- 


26 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


proach to it is probably exhibited by the resting state into 
which some of the lower animals, as the wheel-animalcules, 
pass when dried slowly at a low temperature; the drying act¬ 
ing by checking the nutritive processes, which would other¬ 
wise have prevented the reattainment of molecular equilib¬ 
rium. All signs of movement or other change disappear 
under these circumstances, but as soon as water again soaks 
into their substance and disturbs the existing condition, then 
the so-called “ spontaneous” movements recommence. If, 
therefore, we use the term spontaneity to express a power in 
a resting system of particles of initiating changes in itself, it 
is possessed neither by living nor not-living things. But if 
we simply employ it to designate changes whose primary 
cause we do not recognize, and whose cause was in many 
cases long antecedent to the changes which we see, then the 
term is unobjectionable and convenient, as it serves to ex¬ 
press briefly a phenomenon presented by many living things 
and finding its highest manifestation in many human actions. 
It then, however, no longer designates a property peculiar to 
them. A steam-engine with its furnace lighted and water in 
its boiler may be set in motion by opening a valve, and the 
movements thus started will continue spontaneously, in the 
above sense, until the coals or water are used up. The differ¬ 
ence between it and the living cell lies not in any spontaneity 
of the latter, but in its nutritive powers, which enable it to 
replace continually what answers to the coals and water of 
the engine. 

Protoplasm. The cell-body was formerly regarded as es¬ 
sentially made up of a single substance, which was named 
protoplasm : and now that its structure is known to be com¬ 
plex the term is retained as a convenient one for that mixture 
of spongioplasm and hyaloplasm which constitutes the main 
bulk of the bodies of most cells. With the protoplasm other 
things are frequently present, the most important of which 
are either materials undergoing anabolic changes but not yet 
completely built up into protoplasm, or katabolic materials 
resulting from the chemical degradation of protoplasm : 
these secondary matters, mingled with the completed proto¬ 
plasm, are conveniently spoken of as the cell deutoplasm or 
paraplasm . As between the spongioplasm and hyaloplasm 
there are still some differences of opinion as to which is the 
more immediate agent in the manifestation of the vital activ- 


THE FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTIONS. 27 


ities of the cell. So far as the manifestation of the power of 
movement is concerned the evidence seems in favor of the 
hyaloplasm: the outermost parts of a white blood-corpuscle, 
for example, exhibit active contractile power, yet they con¬ 
tain no spongioplastic filaments; and many unicellular living 
things are known in which no reticular structure can be dis¬ 
covered and which nevertheless nourish themselves and are 
reproductive, irritable, contractile, conductive, co ordinative 
and automatic. It is therefore possible that the filaments 
when present are to be regarded as secondary in importance 
to the hyaloplasm, partly serving as a mechanical support; 
but in addition they may play an important part in the inter¬ 
nal economy of the cell. The study of the physiology of in¬ 
dividual cells presents very great difficulties and is yet in its 
beginnings, so that we can do little more than speak of the 
properties of the cell as a whole, though from the frequent 
radial arrangement of the cell-protoplasm in its neighborhood 
and from the part it plays in the initiation of cell division, 
the attraction-particle appears to have a very important role. 

Of the actual chemical composition of living matter we 
know only that its molecule is one of great complexity: all 
methods of chemical analysis break it up and alter it funda¬ 
mentally, so that what is really analyzed is not living matter 
but a mixture of the products of its decomposition, among 
which proteid substances are always prominent. 

Cell protoplasm no doubt varies a little in different cells, 
so that toe name is to be regarded as a general term designat¬ 
ing a number of closely-allied substances agreeing with one 
another chemically in main points, as the proteids do, but 
differing in minor details, in consequence of which one cell 
differs from another in faculty. On proximate analysis every 
mass of protoplasm is found to comain much water and a 
certain amount of mineral salts; the water being in part con¬ 
stituent or entering into the structure of the particles of pro¬ 
toplasm. and in part probably deposited in layers between 
them. Of organic constituents protoplasm always yields one 
or more proteids, some fats, and some starchy or saccharine 
body. So that the original protoplasm is probably to be re¬ 
garded as containing chemical “ residues ” of proteids, fats 
an 1 carbohydrates, combined with salts and water. 

The name nuclein has been given to a substance or mix¬ 
ture of substances which are left behind when the cell-proto- 



28 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


plasm has been dissolved away by various reagents: it con¬ 
tains a considerable quantity of phosphorus. In the living 
nucleus nuclein seems to be combined with various proteids 
to form nucleo-allumins . 

The Fundamental Physiological Properties. All living 

animals possess in greater or less degree the properties con¬ 
sidered in this chapter; and since the science of physiology 
is virtually concerned with considering how these properties 
are acquired, maintained and manifested, and for what ends 
they are employed, we may call them the fundamental physi¬ 
ological properties . 


CHAPTER III. 


THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE TISSUES AND THE 
PHYSIOLOGICAL DIVISION OF EMPLOYMENTS. 

Development. Every Human Body commences its indi¬ 
vidual existence as a single nucleated cell. This cell, known 
as the ovum , divides or segments and gives rise to a mass con- 



Fig. 11a. — A, an ovum; B to E , successive stages in its segmentation until the 
morula, F , is produced; a, cell-sac; b , cell contents; c, nucleus. 

sisting of a number of similar units and called the mulberry 
mass or the morula. At this stage, long before birth, there 
are no distinguishable tissues entering into the structure of 
the Body, nor are any organs recognizable. 

For a short time the morula increases in size by the 
growth and division of its cells, but very soon new processes 
occur which ultimately give rise to the complex adult body 
with its many tissues and organs. Groups of cells ceasing to 
grow and multiply like their parents begin to grow in ways 
peculiar to themselves, and so come to differ both from the 
original cells of the morula and from the cells of other groups, 
and this unlikeness becoming more and more marked, a 
varied whole is finally built up from one originally alike in 

29 


30 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


all its parts. Peculiar growth of this kind, forming a com¬ 
plex from a simple whole, is called development; and the pro¬ 
cess itself in this case is known as the differentiation of the 
tissues , since by it they are, so to speak, separated or special¬ 
ized from the general mass of mother-cells forming the 
morula. 

As the differences in the form and structure of the con¬ 
stituent cells of the morula become marked, differences in 
property arise, and it becomes obvious that the whole cell- 
aggregate is not destined to give rise to a collection of inde¬ 
pendent living things, but to form a single human being, in 
whom each part, while maintaining its own life, shall have 
duties to perform for the good of the whole. In other words, 
a single compound individual is to be built up by the union 
and co-operation of a number of simple ones represented by 
the various cells, each of which thenceforth, while primarily 
looking after its own interests and having its own peculiar 
faculties, has at the same time its activities subordinated to 
the good of the entire community. 

The Physiological Division of Labor. The fundamental 
physiological properties, originally exhibited by all the cells, 
become ultimately distributed between the different modified 
cells which form the tissues of the fully developed Body 
much in the same way as different employments are dis¬ 
tributed in a civilized state; for the difference between the 
fully developed Human Body and the collection of amoeboid 
cells from which it started is essentially the same as that 
between a number of wandering savages and a civilized nation. 
In the former, apart from differences dependent on sex, each 
individual has no one special occupation different from that 
of the rest, but has all his own needs to look after: he must 
collect his own food and prepare it for eating, make his own 
clothes, if he wear any, provide his own shelter, and defend 
himself from wild beasts or his fellow men. In the civilized 
countr) 7 , on the other hand, we find agriculturists to raise 
food and cooks to prepare it, tailors to make clothes, and 
policemen and soldiers to provide protection. And just as 
we find that when distribution of employments in it is more 
minute a nation is more advanced in civilization, so is an 
animal higher or lower in the scale according to the degree 
in which it exhibits a division of physiological duties between 
its different tissues. 


THE DIFFERENTIATION OF TISSUES. 


31 


From the subdivision of labor in advanced communities 
several important consequences arise. In the first place, each 
man devoting himself to one kind of work mainly and relying 
upon others for the supply of his other needs, every sort of 
work is better done. The man who is constantly making 
boots becomes more expert than one whose attention is con¬ 
stantly distracted by other duties, and he can not only make 
more boots in a given time, but better ones; and so with the 
performance of all other kinds of work. In the second place, 
a necessity arises for a new sort of industry, in order to con¬ 
vey the produce of one individual in excess of the needs of 
himself and his family to those at a distance who may want 
it, and to convey back in return the excess of their produce 
which he needs. The carriage of food from the country to 
cities, and of city produce to country districts, and the occu¬ 
pation of shopkeeping, are instances of these new kinds of 
labor which arise in civilized communities. In addition there 
is developed a need for arrangements by which the work of 
individuals shall be regulated in proportion to the wants of 
the whole community, such as is in part effected by the 
agency of large employers of labor who regulate the activities 
of a number of individuals for the production of various 
articles in the different quantities required at different times. 

Exactly similar phenomena result from the subdivision of 
labor in the Human Body. By the distribution of employ¬ 
ments between its different tissues, each one specially doing 
one work for the general community and relying on the 
others for their aid in turn, every necessary work is better 
performed. And a need arises for a distributive mechanism 
by which the excess products, if any, of various tissues shall 
be carried to others which require them, and for a regulative 
mechanism by which the activities of the various tissues shall 
be rendered proportionate to the needs of the whole Body at 
different times and under different circumstances. 

Classification of the Tissues.— As we might separate the 
inhabitants of the United States into groups, such as lawyers, 
doctors, clergymen, merchants, farmers, and so forth, so we 
may classify the tissues by selecting the most distinctive 
properties of each of those entering into the construction of 
the adult Body and arranging them into physiological groups; 
those of each group being characterized by some one promi¬ 
nent employment. No such classification, however, can be 


32 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


more than approximately accurate, since the same tissue has 
often more than one well-marked physiological property. 
The following arrangement, however, is practically convenient. 

1. Undifferentiated Tissues. These are composed of 
cells which have developed along no one special line, but 
retain very much the form and properties of the cells forming 
the very young Body before different tissues^were recognizable 
in it. The lymph-corpuscles and the colorless corpuscles of 
the blood belong to this class. 

2. Supporting Tissues. Including cartilage (gristle), 
bone and connective tissue . Of the. latter there are several 
subsidiary varieties, the two more important being white 
fibrous connective tissue , composed mainly of colorless inex- 
tensible fibres, and yellow fibrous tissue , composed mainly of 
yellow elastic fibres. All the supporting tissues are used in 
the Body for mechanical purposes : the bones and cartilages 
form the hard framework by which softer tissues are supported 
and protected; and the connective tissues unite the various 
bones and cartilages, form investing membranes around dif¬ 
ferent organs, and in the form of fine networks penetrate their 
substance and support their constituent cells. The functions 
of these tissues being for the most part to passively resist 
strain or pressure, none of them has .any very marked phy¬ 
siological property; they are not, for example, irritable or 
contractile, and their mass is chiefly made up of an intercell¬ 
ular substance which has been formed by the actively living 
cells sparsely scattered through them, as for instance in 
cartilage, Fig. 45, where the cells are seen imbedded in cavi¬ 
ties in a matrix which they have formed around them; and 
this matrix by its firmness and elasticity forms the func¬ 
tionally important part of the tissue. 

3. Nutritive Tissues. These form a large group, the 
members of which fall into three main divisions, viz.: 

Assimilative tissues , concerned in receiving and preparing 
food materials, and including—(ft) Secretory tissues , com¬ 
posed of cells which make the digestive liquids poured into the 
alimentary canal and used to bring about chemical or other 
changes in the food, (b) Receptive tissues , represented by 
cells which line parts of the alimentary canal and take up the 
digested food. 

Eliminative ox excretory tissues, represented by cells in the 


THE DIFFERENTIATION OF TISSUES. 


33 


kidneys, skin, and elsewhere, whose main business it is to get 
rid of the waste products of the various parts of the Body. 

Respiratory tissues. These are concerned in the gaseous 
interchanges between the Body and the surrounding air. 
They are constituted by the cells lining the lungs and by the 
colored corpuscles of the blood. 

As regards the nutritive tissues it requires especially to be 
borne in mind that although such a classification as is here 
given is useful, as helping to show the method pursued in the 
domestic economy of the Body, it is only imperfect and 
largely artificial. Every cell of the Body is in itself assimi¬ 
lative, respiratory, and excretory, and the tissues in this class 
are only those concerned in the first and last interchanges 
of material between it and the external world. They provide 
or get rid of substances for the whole Body, leaving the feed¬ 
ing and breathing and excretion of its individual tissues to be 
ultimately looked after by themselves, just as even the mandarin 
described by Robinson Crusoe who found his dignity promoted 
by having servants to put the food into his mouth, had finally 
to swallow and digest it for himself. Moreover, there is no 
logical distinction between a secretory and an excretory cell: 
each of them is characterized by the separation of certain sub¬ 
stances which are poured out on a free surface on the exterior 
or interior of the Body. Many secretory cells too have no 
concern with the digestion of food, as for example those 
which form the tears and sweat. 

4. Storage Tissues. The Body does not live from hand 
to mouth: it has always in health a supply of food-materials 
accumulated in it beyond its immediate needs. This lies in 
part in the individual cells themselves, just as in a prosperous 
community nearly every one will have some little pocket- 
money. But apart from this reserve there are certain cells, 
a sort of capitalists, which store up considerable quantities of 
material and constitute what we will call the storage tissues . 
These are especially represented by the liver-cells and fat- 
cells, which contain in health a reserve fund for the rest of 
the Body. Since both of these, together with secretory and 
excretory cells, are the seats of great chemical changes, they 
are all often called metabolic tissues . 

5. Irritable Tissues. The maintenance, or at any rate 
the best prosperity, of a nation is not fully secured when a 
division of labor has taken place in food-supply and food-dis- 


34 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


tribution employments. It is extremely desirable that means 
shall be provided by which it may receive information of ex 
ternal changes which may affect it as a whole, such as the 
policy of foreign countries; or which shall enable the inhabi¬ 
tants of one part to know the needs of another, and direct 
their activity accordingly. Foreign ministers and consuls and 
newspaper correspondents are employed to place it in com¬ 
munication with other states and keep it informed as to its 
interests; and we find also organizations, such as the meteor¬ 
ological department, to warn distant parts of approaching 
storms or other climatic changes which may seriously affect 
the pursuits carried on in them. In the Human Body we 
have a comparable class of intelligence-gaining tissues lying 
in the sense-organs, whose business it is to obtain and com¬ 
municate to the whole, information of external changes which 
occur around it. Since the usefulness of these tissues 
depends upon the readiness with which slight causes excite 
them to activity, we may call them the irritable tissues. 

6. Co-ordinating and Automatic Tissues. Such in¬ 
formation as that collected by ministers in foreign parts or by 
meteorological observers is usually sent direct to some central 
office from which it is redistributed; this mere redistribution 
is, however, in many cases but a small part of the work carried 
on in such offices. Let us suppose information to be obtained 
that an Indian chief is collecting his men for an attack on 
some point. The news is probably first transmitted to Wash¬ 
ington, and it becomes the duty of the executive officers there 
to employ certain of the constituent units of the nation in 
such definite work as is needed for its protection. Troops 
have to be sent to the place threatened perhaps; recruits en¬ 
listed ; food and clothes, weapons and ammunition, must be 
provided for the army; and so on. In other words, the work 
of the various classes composing the society has to be organ¬ 
ized for the common good; the mere spreading the news of 
the danger would be of little avail. So in the Body: the 
information forwarded to certain centres from the irritable 
tissues is used in such a way as to arouse to orderly activ¬ 
ity other tissues whose services are required; we find 
thus in these centres a group of co-ordinating tissues, 
represented by nerve-cells and possibly by certain other 
constituents of the nerve-centres. Certain nerve-cells are 
also automatic in the physiological sense already pointed 


THE DIFFERENTIATION OF TISSUES. 


35 


out. The highest manifestation of this latter faculty, shown 
objectively by muscular movements, is subjectively known as 
the “ will,” a state of consciousness; and other mental phe¬ 
nomena, as sensations and emotions, are also associated with 
the activity of nerve-cells lying in the brain. How it is that 
\ any one state of a material cell should give rise to a particular 
state of consciousness is a matter quite beyond our powers 
; of conception; but not really more so than how it is that 
' every portion of matter attracts every other portion according 
to the law of gravitation. In the living Body, as elsewhere 
in the universe, we can study phenomena and make out their 
relations of sequence or coexistence; but why one phenom¬ 
enon is accompanied by another, why in fact any cause pro¬ 
duces an effect, is a matter quite beyond our reach in every 
| case; whether it be a sensation accompanying a molecular 
change in a nerve-cell, or the fall of a stone to the ground in 
obedience to the force of gravity. 

7. Motor Tissues. These have the contractility of the 
original protoplasmic masses highly developed. The more 
important are ciliated cells and muscular tissue. The former 
line certain surfaces of the body, and possess on their free 
surfaces fine threads which are in constant movement. One 
finds such cells, for example (Fig. 50), lining the inside of 
the windpipe, where their threads or cilia serve, by their 
motion, to sweep any fluid formed there towards the throat, 
where it can be coughed up and got rid of. Muscular tissue 
occurs in two main varieties. One kind is found in the mus¬ 
cles attached to the bones, and is that used in the ordinary vol¬ 
untary movements of the Body. It is composed of fibres which 
present cross-stripes when viewed under the microscope (Fig. 
56), and is hence known as striped or striated muscular tis¬ 
sue. The other kind of muscular tissue is found in the walls 
of the alimentary canal and some other hollow organs, and con¬ 
sists of elongated cells (Fig. 60) which present no cross-stria- 
tion. It is known as plain or unstriated muscular tissue. 

The cells enumerated under the heading of “ undiffer¬ 
entiated tissues” might also be included among the motor 
tissues, since they are capable of changing their form. 

8. The Conductive Tissues. These are represented by 
the nerve-fibres, slender threads, each of which has as its essen¬ 
tial part a branch of a nerve-cell having the property of physio¬ 
logical conductivity highly developed; the fibres therefore 


36 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


readily transmit molecular disturbances. When its equilib¬ 
rium is upset at one end, a nerve-fibre transmits to its other 
end a molecular movement known as a “ nervous impulse,” 
and so can excite parts distant from the original exciting 
force. Nerve-fibres place, on the one hand, the irritable 
tissues in connection with the automatic, co-ordinating, and 
sensory; and on the other put the three latter in communica¬ 
tion with the muscular, secretory and other tissues. 

9. Protective Tissues. These consist of certain cells lin¬ 
ing cavities inside the body and called epithelial cells, and cells 
covering the whole exterior of the Body and forming epider¬ 
mis, hairs and nails. The enamel which 
covers the teeth belongs also to this 
group. 

The class of protective tissues is, how¬ 
ever, even more artificial than that of the 
nutritive tissues, and cannot be defined by 
positive characters. Many epithelial cells 
are secretory, excretory or receptive; and 
ciliated cells have already been included 
among the motor tissues, although from 
the fact that the movements of their cilia 
o, ceii-body; c, nucleus; go on in separated cells and independently 
of recognizable external stimuli, they 
might well have been put among the automatic. The protec¬ 
tive tissues may be best defined as including cells which cover 
free surfaces, and whose functions are mainly mechanical or 
physical. In their simplest form epithelial cells are flat 
scales, as, for example, those represented in Fig. 11b, from 
the lining membrane of the abdominal cavity. 

10. The Reproductive Tissues. These are concerned in 
the production of new individuals, and in the Human Body 
are of two kinds, located in different sexes. The conjunction 
of the products of each sex is necessary for the origination 
of offspring, since the female product, egg-cell or ovum, 
which directly develops into the new human being, remains 
dormant until it has been fertilized, and fertilization consists 
essentially in the fusion of its nucleus with the nucleus of a 
cell produced by the male. 

The Combination of Tissues to Form Organs. The va¬ 
rious tissues above enumerated forming the building materials 
of the Body, anatomy is primarily concerned with their struc- 



Fig. 11b.— Flat epithe¬ 
lium-cells from the sur- 


THE DIFFERENTIATION OF TISSUES. 


37 


ture, and physiology with their properties. If this, however, 
were the whole matter, the problems of anatomy and physi¬ 
ology would be much simpler than they actually are. The 
knowledge about the living Body obtained by studying only 
the forms and functions of the individual tissues would be com¬ 
parable to that attained about a great factory by studying 
separately the boilers, pistons, levers, wheels, etc., found in 
it, and leaving out of account altogether the way in which 
these are combined to form various machines; for in the 
Body the various tissues are for the most part associated to 
form organs, each organ answering to a complex machine 
like a steam-engine with its numerous constituent parts. 
And just as in ditferent machines a cogged wheel may per¬ 
form very different duties, dependent upon the way in which 
it is connected with other parts, so in the Body any one tissue, 
although its essential properties are everywhere the same, 
may by its activity subserve very various uses according to 
the manner in which it is combined with others. For ex¬ 
ample: A nerve-fibre uniting the eye with one part of the 
brain will, by means of its conductivity, when its end in the 
eye is excited by the irritable tissue attached to it on which 
light acts, cause changes in the sensory nerve-cells connected 
with its other end and so arouse a sight sensation; but an ex¬ 
actly similar nerve-fibre running from the brain to the mus¬ 
cles will, also by virtue of its conductivity, when its ending 
in the brain is excited by a change in a nerve-cell connected 
with it, stir up the muscle to contract under the control of 
the will. The different results depend on the different parts 
connected with the ends of the nerve-fibres in each case, and 
not on differences in the properties of the nerve-fibres them¬ 
selves. 

It becomes necessary then to study the arrangement and 
uses of the tissues as combined to form various organs, and 
this is frequently far more difficult than to make out the 
structure and properties of the individual tissues. An ordi¬ 
nary muscle, such as one sees in the lean of meat, is a very 
complex organ, containing not only contractile muscular tis¬ 
sue, but supporting and uniting connective tissue and con¬ 
ductive nerve-fibres, and in addition a complex commissariat 
arrangement, composed in its turn of several tissues, con¬ 
cerned in the food-supply and waste removal of the whole 
muscle. The anatomical study of a muscle has to take into 


38 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


account the arrangement of all these parts within it, and also 
its connections with other organs of the Body, The physi¬ 
ology of any muscle must take into account the actions of all 
these parts working together and not merely the functions 
of the muscular fibres themselves, and has also to make out 
under what conditious the muscle is excited to activity by 
changes in other organs, and what changes in these it brings 
about when it works. 

Physiological Mechanisms. Even the study of organs 
added to that of the separate tissues does not exhaust the 
matter. In a factory we frequently find machines arranged 
so that two or more shall work together for the perform¬ 
ance of some one work: a steam-engine and a loom may, 
for example, be connected and used together to weave carpets. 
Similarly in the Body several organs are often arranged to 
work together so as to attain some one end by their united 
actions. Such combinations are known as physiological ap¬ 
paratuses. The circulatory apparatus, for example, consists 
of various organs (each in turn composed of several tissues) 
known as heart, arteries, capillaries and veins. The heart 
forms a force-pump by which the blood is kept flowing 
through the whole mechanism, and the rest, known together 
as the blood-vessels , distribute the blood to the various organs 
and regulate the supply according to their needs. Again, in 
the visual apparatus we find the co-operation of («) a set of 
optical instruments which bring the light proceeding from 
external objects to a focus upon (b) the retina , which con¬ 
tains highly irritable parts; these, changed by the light, 
stimulate ( c ) the optic nerve, which is conductive and trans¬ 
mits a disturbance which arouses in turn (cl) sensory parts in 
the brain. In the production of ordinary sight sensations all 
these parts are concerned and work together as a visual appa¬ 
ratus. So, too, we find a respiratory apparatus, consisting 
primarily of two hollow organs, the lungs, which lie in the 
chest and communicate by the windpipe with the back of the 
throat, from which air enters them. But to complete the 
respiratory apparatus are many other organs, bones, muscles, 
nerves and nerve-centres, which work together to renew the 
air in the lungs from time to time; and the act of breathing 
is the final result of the activity of the whole apparatus. 

Many similar instances, as the alimentary apparatus, the 


TEE DIFFERENTIATION OF TISSUES. 


39 


auditory apparatus, and so on, will readily be thought of. 
The study of the working of such complicated mechanisms 
forms a very important part of physiology. 

Anatomical Systems. From the anatomical side a whole 
collection of bodily organs agreeing in structure with one 
another is often spoken of as a system; all the muscles, for 
example, are grouped together as the muscular system , and 
all the bones as the osseous system , and so on, without any 
reference to the different uses of different muscles or bones. 
The term system is, however, often used as equivalent to 
“apparatus”: one reads indifferently of the “circulatory sys¬ 
tem ” or the “ circulatory apparatus.” It is better, however, 
to reserve the term system for a collection of organs classed 
together on account of similarity of structure; and “appa¬ 
ratus ” for a collection of organs considered together on ac¬ 
count of their co-operation to execute one function. The 
former term will then have an anatomical, the latter a phy¬ 
siological, significance. 

The Body as a Working Whole. Finally it must all 
through be borne in mind that not even the most complex 
system or apparatus can be considered altogether alone as an 
independently living part. All are united to make one living 
Body, in which there is throughout a mutual interdepend¬ 
ence, so that the whole forms one human being, in whom the 
circulatory, respiratory, digestive, sensory and other appara¬ 
tuses are constantly influencing one another, each modifying 
the activities of the rest. This interaction is mainly brought 
about through the conductive and co-ordinating tissues of 
the nervous system, which place all parts of the Body in com¬ 
munication. But in addition to this another bond of union 
is formed by the blood, which by the circulatory apparatus is 
carried from tissue to tissue and organ to organ and so, bring¬ 
ing materials derived in one region to distant parts, enables 
each organ to influence all the rest for good or ill. 

Besides the blood another liquid, called lymph , exists in 
the Body. It is contained in vessels distinct from those 
which carry the blood, but emptying into the blood-vessels at 
certain points. This liquid being also in constant movement 
forms another agency by which products are carried from 
part to part, and the welfare or ill-fare of one member en¬ 
abled to influence all. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE INTERNAL MEDIUM. 

The External Medium. During the whole of life inter¬ 
changes of material go on between every living being and the 
external world; by these exchanges material particles that 
one time constitute parts of inanimate objects come at an¬ 
other to form part of a living being; and later on these 
same atoms, after having been a part of a living thing, are 
passed out from it in the form of lifeless compounds. As 
the foods and wastes of various organisms differ more or 
less, so are more or less different environments suited for 
their existence; and there is accordingly a relationship be¬ 
tween the plants and animals living in any one place and the 
conditions of air, earth and water prevailing there. Even 
such simple unicellular animals .as the amcebas live only in 
water or mud containing in solution certain gases, and in sus¬ 
pension solid food-particles; and they soon die if the water 
be changed either by essentially altering its gases or by taking 
out of it the solid food. So in yeast we find a unicellular 
plant which thrives and multiplies only in liquids of certain 
composition, and which in the absence of organic compounds 
of carbon in solution will not grow at all. Each of these 
simple living things, which corresponds to one only of the in¬ 
numerable cells composing the full-grown Human Body, thus 
requires for the manifestation of its vital properties the pres¬ 
ence of a surrounding medium suited to itself: the yeast 
would die, or at the best lie dormant, in a liquid containing 
only the solid organic particles on which the amoeba lives; 
and the amoeba would die in such solutions as those in which 
yeast thrives best. 

The Internal Medium. A similar close relationship be¬ 
tween the living being and its environment, and an inter¬ 
change between the two like that which we find in the amoeba 
and the yeast-cell, we find also in even the most complex 
living beings. When, however, an animal comes to be com- 




THE INTERNAL MEDIUM. 


41 


posed of many cells, some of which are placed far away from 
the surface of its body and from immediate contact with 
the environment, there arises a new need—a necessity for an 
internal medium or plasma which shall play the same part 
toward the individual cells as the surrounding air, water and 
food to the whole animal. This internal medium kept in 
movement and receiving at some regions of the bodily sur¬ 
faces materials from the exterior, while losing substances to 
the exterior at the same or other surfaces, forms a sort of 
middleman between the individual tissues and the surround¬ 
ing world, and stands in the same relationship to each of the 
cells of the Body as the water in which an amoeba lives does 
to that animal, or beer-wort does to a yeast-cell. We find 
accordingly the Human Body pervaded by a liquid plasma, 
containing gases and food-material in solution, the presence 
of which is necessary for the maintenance of the life of the 
tissues. Any great change in this medium will affect in¬ 
juriously few or many of the groups of cells in the Body, or 
may even cause their death; just as altering the media in 
which they live will kill an amoeba or a yeast-cell. 

The Blood. In the Human Body the internal medium is 
primarily furnished by the Hood, which, as every one knows, 
is a red liquid very widely distributed over the frame, since 
it flows from any part when the skin is cut through. There 
are in fact very few portions of the Body into which the 
blood is not carried. One of the exceptions is the epidermis 
or outer layer of the skin: if a cut be made through it only, 
leaving the deeper skin-layers intact, no blood will flow from 
the wound. Hairs and nails also contain no blood. In the 
interior of the Body the epithelial layers lining free surfaces, 
such as the inside of the alimentary canal, contain no blood, 
nor do the hard parts of the teeth, the cartilages, and the 
refracting media of the eye (see Chap. XXXII), but these 
interior parts are moistened with liquid of some kind, and 
unlike the epidermis are protected from rapid evaporation. 
All these bloodless parts together form a group of non-vas- 
cular tissues ,* they alone excepted, a wound of any part of 
the Body will cause bleeding. 

In many of the lower animals there is no need that the 
liquid representing their blood should be renewed very rapidly 
in different parts. Their cells live slowly, and so require but 
little food and produce but little waste. In a sea-anemone. 


42 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


for example, there is no special arrangement to keep the 
blood moving; it is just pushed about from part to part by 
the general movements of the body of the animal. But in 
higher animals, especially those with an elevated temperature, 
such an arrangement, or rather absence of arrangement, as 
this would not suffice. In them the constituent cells live 
very fast, making much waste and using much food, and 
altering the blood in their neighborhood very rapidly. Be¬ 
sides, we have seen that in complex animals certain cells are 
set apart to get food for the whole organism and certain 
others to finally remove its wastes, and there must be a sure 
and rapid interchange of material between the feeding and 
excreting tissues and all the others. This can only be brought 
about by a rapid movement of the blood in a definite course, 
and that is accomplished by shutting it up in a closed set of 
tubes, and placing somewhere a pump, which constantly takes 
in blood from one end of the system of tubes and forces it 
out again into the other. Sent by this pump, the heart , 
through all parts of the Body and back to the heart again, 
the blood gets food from the receptive cells, takes it to the 
working cells, carries off the waste of these latter to the ex¬ 
creting cells; and so the round goes on. 

The Lymph. The blood, however, lies everywhere in 
closed tubes formed by the vascular system, and does not 
come into direct contact with any cells of the Body except 
those which float in it and those which line the interior of the 
blood-vessels. At one part of its course, how¬ 
ever, the vessels through which it passes have 
extremely thin coats, and through the walls of 
these capillaries liquid transudes from the blood 
and bathes the various tissues. The transuded 
liquid is the lymph , and it is this which forms 


J 

L 

b 

L c 


fKK 

’ Salt.. 

[Sugar 

; 

j 

-—^ 



Fig. 


fS7 “apparatus; except the few which the blood moistens di- 

STand™ rectl y- 

separated by a Dialysis. When two liquids containing dif- 


membrane. 


ferent matters in solution are separated from 
one another by a moist animal membrane, an interchange of 
material will take place under certain conditions. If A be a 
vessel (Fig. 12) completely divided vertically by such a mem¬ 
brane, and a solution of common salt in water be placed on 
the side b } and a solution of sugar in water on the side c, it 









43 


TEE INTERNAL MEDIUM. 

will be found after a time that some salt has got into c and 
some sugar into b, although there are no visible pores in the 
partition. Such an interchange is said to be due to dialysis 
or osmosis, and if the process were allowed to go on for some 
hours the same proportions of salt and sugar would be found 
in the solution on either side of the dividing membrane. 

The Renewal of the Lymph. Osmotic phenomena play 
a great part in the nutritive processes of the Body. The 
lymph present in any organ gives up things to the cells there 
and gets things from them; and thus, although it may have 
originally been tolerably like the liquid part of the blood, it 
soon acquires a different chemical composition. Diffusion 
or dialysis then commences between the lymph outside and 
the blood inside the capillaries, and the latter gives up to the 
lymph new materials in placa of those which it has lost and 
takes from it the waste products it has received from the tis¬ 
sues. When this blood, altert i by exchanges with the lymph, 
gets again to the neighborhood of the receptive cells, having 
lost some food-materials it is poorer in these than the richly 
supplied lymph around those cells, and takes up a supply by 
dialysis from it. When it reaches the excretory organs it has 
previously picked up a quantity of waste matters and loses 
these by dialysis to the lymph there present, which is special¬ 
ly poor in such matters, since the excretory cells constantly 
deprive it of them. In consequence of the different wants 
and wastes of various cells, and of the same cells at different 
times, the lymph must vary considerably in composition in 
various organs of the Body, and the blood flowing through 
them will gain or lose different things in different places. 
But renewing during its circuit in one what it loses in 
another, its average composition is kept pretty constant, and, 
through interchange with it, the average composition of the 
lymph also. 

The Lymphatic Vessels. The blood, on the whole, loses 
more liquid to the lymph through the capillary walls than it 
receives back the same way. This depends mainly on the 
fact that the pressure on the blood inside the vessels is greater 
than that on the lymph outside, and so a certain amount of 
filtration of liquid from within out occurs through the vas¬ 
cular wall in addition to the dialysis proper. The excess is 
collected from the various organs of the Body into a set of 
lymphatic vessels which carry it directly back into some of 


44 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the larger blood-vessels near where these empty into the 
heart; by this flow of the lymph, under pressure from behind, 
it is renewed in various organs, fresh liquid filtering through 
the capillaries to take its place as fast as the old is carried off. 

The Lacteals. In the walls of the alimentary canal cer¬ 
tain food-materials after passing through the receptive cells 
into the lymph are not transferred locally, like the rest, by 
dialysis into the blood, but are carried off bodily in the lymph- 
vessels and poured into the veins of a distant part of the 
Body. The lymphatic vessels concerned in this work, being 
frequently filled with a white liquid during digestion, are 
called the milky or lacteal vessels. 

Summary. To sum up: the blood and lymph form the 
internal medium in which the tissues of the Body live; the 
lymph is primarily derived from the blood and forms the im¬ 
mediate plasma for the great majority of the living cells of 
the Body; and the excess of it is finally returned to the' 
blood. The lymph moves but slowly, but is constantly reno¬ 
vated by the blood, which is kept in rapid movement, and 
which, besides containing a store of new food-matters for the 
lymph, carries off the wastes which the various cells have 
poured into the latter, and thus is also a sort of sewage stream 
into which the wastes of the whole Body are primarily col¬ 
lected. 

Microscopic Characters of Blood. If a finger be pricked, 
and the drop of blood flowing out be spread on a glass slide, 
covered, protected from evaporation, and examined with a 
microscope magnifying about 400 diameters, it will be seen 
to consist of innumerable solid bodies floating in a liquid. 
The solid bodies are the blood-corpuscles , and the liquid is 
the blood-plasma or liquor sanguinis. 

The corpuscles are not all alike. While currents still exist 
in the freshly-spread drop of blood, the great majority of 
them are readily carried to and fro; but a certain number 
more commonly stick to the glass and remain in one place. 
The former are the red , the latter the pale or colorless blood- 
corpuscles. 

Red Corpuscles. Form and Size. The red corpuscles 
as they float about frequently seem to vary in form, but by a 
little attention it can be made out that this appearance is due 
to their turning round as they float, and so presenting differ¬ 
ent aspects to view; just as a silver dollar presents a different 


THE INTERNAL MEDIUM. 


45 


outline according as it is looked at from the front or edge¬ 
wise or in three-quarter profile. 

Sometimes the corpuscle (Fig. 13, B) appears circular; 
then it is seen in full face; sometimes linear ( C ), and slightly 
narrowed in the middle; sometimes oval, as the dollar when 
half-way between a full and a side view. These appearances 
show that each red corpuscle is a circular disk, slightly hol¬ 
lowed in the middle (or biconcave) and about four times as 
wide as it is thick. The average transverse diameter is 0.008 
milimeter ( 5^00 inch). Shortly after blood is drawn the 



Fig. 13.—Blood-corpuscles. A, magnified about 400 diameters. The red corpus¬ 
cles have arranged themselves in rouleaux ; a, a, colorless corpuscles ; B , red cor¬ 
puscles more magnified and seen in focus ; E. a red corpuscle slightly out of focus. 
Near the right-hand top corner is a red corpuscle seen in three-quarter face, and at 
C one seen edgewise. E, (?, H, I, white corpuscles highly magnified. 

corpuscles arrange themselves in rows, or rouleaux , adhering 
to one another by their broader surfaces. 

Color .—Seen singly each red corpuscle is of a pale yellow 
color; it is only when collected in masses that they appear 
red. The blood owes its red color to the great numbers of 
these bodies in it; if it is spread out in a very thin layer it, 
too, is yellow. In a cubic millimeter inch) of blood there 
are about five million red corpuscles. 

Structure .—Seen from the front the central part of 
each red corpuscle in a certain focus of the microscope 
appears dimmer or darker than the rest (Fig. 13, B), ex- 





46 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


cept a narrow band near the outer rim. If the lens of the 
microscope be raised, however, this previously dimmer central 
part becomes brighter, and the previously brighter part ob¬ 
scure (. E ). This difference in appearance does not indicate 
the presence of a central part or nucleus different from the 
rest, but is an optical phenomenon due to the shape of the 
corpuscle, in consequence of which it acts like a little bicon¬ 
cave lens. Kays of light passing through near the centre of 
the corpuscles are refracted differently from those passing 
through elsewhere; and when the microscope is so focussed 
that the latter reach the eye, the former do not, and vice 
versa ; thus when the central parts look bright, those around 
them look obscure, and the contrary. 

There Is no satisfactory evidence that these corpuscles 
have any enveloping sac or cell-wall. All the methods used 
to bring one into view under the microscope are such as 
would coagulate the outer layers of the substance composing 
the corpuscle and so make an artificial envelope. So far as 
optical analysis goes, then, each corpuscle is homogeneous 
throughout. By other means we can, however, show that at 
least two materials enter into the structure of each red cor¬ 
puscle. If the blood be diluted with several times its own 
bulk of water and examined with the microscope, it will be 
found that the formerly red corpuscles are now colorless and 
the plasma colored. The dilution has caused the coloring 
matter to pass out of the corpuscles and dissolve in the liquid. 
This coloring constituent of the corpuscle is Jicemoglolin , and 
the colorless residue which it leaves behind and which swells 
up into a sphere in the diluted plasma is the stroma. In the 
living corpuscle the two are intimately mingled throughout 
it, and so long as this is the case the blood is opaque; but 
when the coloring matter dissolves in the plasma, then the 
blood becomes transparent, or, as it is called, laky. The 
difference may be very well seen by comparing a thin layer of 
fresh blood diluted with ten times its volume of ten-per-cent 
salt solution with a similar layer of blood diluted with ten 
volumes of water. The watery mixture is a dark transparent 
red; the other, in which the coloring matter still lies in the 
corpuscles, -is a brighter opaque red. 

Consistency .—Each red corpuscle is a soft jelly-like mass 
which can be readily crushed out of shape. Unless the pres¬ 
sure be such as to rupture it, the corpuscle immediately reas- 


THE INTERNAL MEDIUM. 


47 


sumes its proper form when the external force is removed. 
The corpuscles are, then, highly elastic; they frequently can 
be seen much dragged out of shape inside the vessels when 
the circulation of the blood is watched in a living animal 
(Chap. XV), but immediately springing back to their normal 
form when they get a chance. 

Blood-crystals. Haemoglobin is, as above shown, readily 
soluble in water. In this it soon decomposes if kept in a 
warm room, breaking up into a colorless proteid substance 
called globulin and a red body, Ticematin. By keeping the 
haemoglobin solution very cold, however, this decomposition 
can be greatly retarded, and at the same time the solubility 
of the haemoglobin in the water much diminished. In dilute 
alcohol haemoglobin is still less soluble, and so if its ice-cold 


watery solution have one 
fourth of its volume of 
cold alcohol added to it 
and the mixture be put in 
a refrigerator for twenty- 
four hours, a part of the 
haemoglobin will often, 
crystallize out and sink to 
the bottom of the vessel, 
where it can be collected foi 
examination. The haemo- 



Fig 14.—Blood-crystals, or haemoglobin 
crystals. 


globin of the rat is less soluble than that of man, and there¬ 
fore crystallizes out especially easily; but these haemoglobin 
crystals, or, as they are often called, blood-crystals , can also 
be obtained from human blood. In 100 parts of dry human 
red blood-corpuscles there arc of 90 haemoglobin. The haemo¬ 
globin is the essential constituent of the red blood-corpuscles, 
enabling them to pick up large quantities of oxygen in the 
lungs and carry it to other parts. (See Respiration.) 

Haemoglobin contains a considerable quantity of iron, much 
more than any other proximate constituent of the Body. 

The Colorless Blood-corpuscles (Fig. 13, F f H i G). The 
colorless , pale or white corpuscles of the blood are far less 
numerous than the red; in health there is on the average 
about one white to three hundred red, but the proportion 
may vary considerably Each is finely granular and consists 
of a soft mass of protoplasm enveloped in no definite cell-wall, 
but containing a nucleus. The granules in the protoplasm 




48 


THE HUMAN BODY. 



commonly hide the nucleus in a fresh corpuscle, but dilute 
acetic acid dissolves most of them and brings the nucleus into 
view. These pale corpuscles belong to the group of undiffer¬ 
entiated tissues, and differ in no important recognizable 
character from the cells which make up the whole very young 
Human Body, nor indeed from such a unicellular animal as 
an Amoeba. They have the power of slowly changing their 
form spontaneously. At one moment a pale corpuscle will 
be seen as a spheroidal mass; a few seconds later (Big. 15) 
processes will be seen radiating from this, and soon after 
these processes may be retracted and 
g* ot hers thrust out; and so the corpuscle 
goes on changing its shape. These slow 
amoeboid movements are greatly promoted 
Pa by keeping the specimen of blood at the 
* temperature of the Body. By thrusting 
out a process on one side, then drawing 
Fig. is.-a white blood- the rest of its body up to it, and then 
Sv| cl fntirvSs e of a a few sending out a process again on the same 
changes of^orlTdue^te side, the corpuscle can slowly change its 
amoeboid movements. place and creep across the field of the 

microscope. Inside the blood-vessels these corpuscles often 
execute similar movements; and they sometimes bore right 
through the capillary walls and, getting out into the lymph- 
spaces, creep about among the other tissues. This migration 
is especially frequent in inflamed parts, and the pus or 
“matter” which collects in abscesses is largely made up of 
white blood-corpuscles which have in this way got out of the 
blood-vessels. The average diameter of the white corpuscles >1 
is one third greater than that of the red. 

The colorless corpuscles, or some of them, are capable of 
taking into themselves foreign particles present in the blood; 
this they do in a manner similar to that in which an amoeba 
feeds: the process is known as phagocytosis and the cells ex¬ 
hibiting it as phagocytes. Among the substances observed to 
be taken up by white corpuscles are the minute organisms 
known as Bacteriay certain species of* which have been proved 
to be the causes of some diseases {zymotic diseases). (The 
white corpuscles may in this way play an important part in 
the cure of such diseases, or in their prevention in persons 
exposed to infection. The accumulation of white corpus¬ 
cles in inflamed or injured parts is probably primarily as- 


3 

THE INTERNAL MEDIUM. 49 

sociated with the removal of dead and broken-down tissues, 
though it may be carried to excess as in the case of purulent 
accumulations. 

The Blood Platelets or Plaques are a third kind of blood- 
corpuscle, considerably smaller than the red, but somewhat 
resembling them in form. They adhere together, break down 
and form sticky clumps with great rapidity in drawn blood 
unless special precautions are taken. 

Blood of Other Animals. In all animals with blood the 
pale corpuscles are pretty much alike, but the red corpuscles, 
which with rare exceptions are found only in Vertebrates, 
vary considerably. In all the classes of the mammalia they 
are circular biconcave disks, with the exception of the camel 
tribe, in which they are oval. They vary in diameter from 0.02 
mm. ( T ^nj inch) (musk deer) to .011 mm. inch) (ele¬ 

phant). In the dog they are nearly the same size as those of 
man. In no mammals do the fully-developed red corpuscles 
possess a nucleus. In all other vertebrate classes the red cor¬ 
puscles possess a central nucleus, and are oval slightly bi¬ 
convex disks, except in a few fishes in which they are cir¬ 
cular. They are largest of all in the amphibia. Those of 
the frog are 0.02 mm. (j^Vo i nc h) l° n g an( I *907 mm. 
inch) broad. 

Histology of Lymph. Pure lymph is a colorless watery- 
looking liquid; examined with a microscope it is seen to con¬ 
tain numerous pale corpuscles closely resembling those of the 
blood, and no doubt many are pale blood-corpuscles which 
have migrated. These lymph-corpuscles or leucocytes have, 
however, another more important origin. In many parts of the 
Body there are collections of a peculiar lymphoid or adenoid 
tissue , sometimes in nodular masses (lymphatic glands). 
This tissue consists essentially of a fine network, the meshes 
of wnich are occupied with leucocytes which frequently show 
signs of division. The meshes of the network communicate 
with lymphatic vessels and the lymph flowing through picks 
up and cairies off the new-formed leucocytes. The lymph 
being ultimately poured into the blood, the leucocytes be¬ 
come the colorless corpuscles of the latter; and the migrating 
cells of the blood are therefore but lymph-corpuscles restored 
to the lymph, perhaps somewhat changed during their life in 
the blood-plasma. 

The lymph flowing from the intestines during digestion 


50 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


is, as already mentioned, not colorless, but white and milky. 
It is known as chyle , and will be considered with the process 
of digestion. During fasting the lymph from the intestines 
is colorless, like that from other parts of the Body. 


CHAPTER Y. 


THE CLOTTING OF BLOOD. 

The Coagulation of the Blood. When blood is first 
drawn from the living Body it is perfectly liquid, flowing in 
any direction as readily as water. This condition is, however, 
only temporary; in a few minutes the blood becomes viscid 
and sticky, and the viscidity becomes more and more marked 
until, after the lapse of five or six minutes, the whole mass 
sets into a jelly which adheres to the vessel containing it, so 
that this may be inverted without any blood whatever being 
spilled. This stage is known as that of gelatinization and is 
also not permanent. In a few minutes the top of the jelly- 
like mass will be seen to be hollowed or “ cupped ” and in the 
concavity will be seen a small quantity of nearly colorless 
liquid, the blood-serum. The jelly next shrinks so as to pull 
itself loose from the sides and bottom of the vessel containing 
it, and as it shrinks squeezes out more and more serum. Ulti¬ 
mately we get a solid clot , colored red and smaller in size 
than the vessel in which the blood coagulated though retain¬ 
ing its form, floating in a quantity of pale yellow serum. If, 
however, the blood be not allowed to coagulate in perfect rest, 
a certain number of red corpuscles will be rubbed out of the 
clot into the serum and the latter will be more or less reddish. 
The longer the clot is kept the more serum will be obtained: 
if the first quantity exuded be decanted off and the clot put 
aside and protected from evaporation, it will in a short time 
be found to have shrunk to a smaller size and to have pressed 
out more serum; and this goes on until putrefactive changes 
commence. 

Cause of Coagulation. If a drop of fresh-drawn blood 
be spread out very thin and watched for a few minutes with a 
microscope magnifying 600 or 700 diameters, it will be seen 
that the coagulation is due to the separation of very fine solid 
threads which run in every direction through the plasma and 
form a close network entangling all the corpuscles. These 

51 


52 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


threads are composed of the proteid substance fibrin. When 
they first form, the whole drop is much like a sponge soaked 
full of water (represented by the serum) and having solid 
bodies (the corpuscles) in its cavities. After the fibrin threads 
have been formed they tend to shorten; hence when blood 
clots in mass in a vessel, the fibrinous network tends to shrink 
in every direction just as a network formed of stretched 
india-rubber bands would, and this shrinkage is greater the 
longer the clotted blood is kept. At first the threads stick 
too firmly to the bottom and sides of the vessel to be pulled 
away, and thus the first sign of the contraction of the fibrin 
is seen in the cupping of the surface of the gelatinized blood 
where the threads have no solid attachment, and there the 
contracting mass presses out from its meshes the first drops of 
serum. Finally the contraction of the fibrin overcomes its ad¬ 
hesion to the vessel and the clot pulls itself loose on all sides, 
pressing out more and more serum, in which it ultimately 
floats. The great majority of the red corpuscles are held back 
in the meshes of the fibrin, but a good many pale corpuscles, 
by their amoeboid movements, work their way out and get 
into the serum. 

Whipped Blood. The essential point in coagulation 
being the formation of fibrin in the plasma, and blood only 
forming a certain amount of fibrin, if this be removed as fast 
as it forms the remaining blood will not clot. The fibrin 
may be separated by what is known as “ whipping” the blood. 
For this purpose fresh-drawn blood is stirred up vigorously 
with a bunch of twigs, and to these the sticky fibrin threads 
as they form, adhere. If the twigs be withdrawn after a few 
minutes a quantity of stringy material will be found attached 
to them. This is at first colored red by adhering blood-cor¬ 
puscles: but by washing in water they may be removed, and 
the pure fibrin thus obtained is perfectly white and in the 
form of highly elastic threads. It is insoluble in water and 
in dilute acids, but swells up to a transparent jelly in the 
latter. The “ whipped ” or “ defibrinated blood ” from which 
the fibrin has been in this way removed, looks just like ordinary 
blood, but has lost the power of coagulating spontaneously. 

The Buffy Coat. That the red corpuscles are not an 
essential part of the clot, but are merely mechanically caught 
up in it, seems clear from the microscopic observation of 
the process of coagulation; and from the fact that perfectly 



TIIE CLOTTING OF BLOOD. 


53 


formed fibrin can be obtained free from corpuscles by whip¬ 
ping the blood and washing the threads which adhere to the 
twigs. Under certain conditions, moreover, one gets a natu¬ 
rally formed clot containing no red corpuscles in one part of 
it. The corpuscles of human blood are a little heavier, bulk 
for bulk, than the plasma in which they float; hence, when 
the blood is drawn and left at rest they sink slowly in it; 
and if for any reason clotting take place more slowly or the 
corpuscles sink more rapidly than usual, a colorless top 
stratum of plasma, with no red corpuscles in it, is left 
before gelatinization occurs and stops the further sinking of 
the corpuscles. The uppermost part of the clot formed 
under such circumstances is colorless or pale yellow, and is 
known as the buffy coat; it is especially apt to be formed in 
the blood drawn from febrile patients, and was therefore a 
point to which physicians paid much attention in the olden 
times when bloodletting was thought to be almost a panacea. 
In horse’s blood the difference between the specific gravity of 
the corpuscles and that of the plasma is greater than in 
human blood, and horse’s blood also coagulates more slowly, 
so that its clot has nearly always a buffy coat. The colorless 
buffy coat seen sometimes on the top of the clot must, how¬ 
ever, not be confounded with another phenomenon. When 
a blood-clot is left floating exposed to the air its top becomes 
bright scarlet, while the part immersed in the serum assumes 
a dark purple-red color. The brightness of the top layer is 
due to the action of the oxygen of the air, which forms a 
scarlet compound with the coloring matter of the red cor¬ 
puscles. If the clot be turned upside down and left for a 
short time, the previously dark red bottom layer, now exposed 
to the air, becomes bright; and the previously bright top 
layer, now immersed in the serum, loses iis oxygen and be¬ 
comes dark. 

Uses of Coagulation. The clotting of the blood is so im¬ 
portant a process that its cause has been frequently investi¬ 
gated; but it is not yet completely understood. The living 
circulating blood in the healthy blood-vessels does not clot; 
it contains no solid fibrin, but this forms in it, sooner or later, 
when the blood gets by any means out of the vessels or when 
the lining of these is injured. In this way the mouths of the 
small vessels opened in a cut are clogged up, and the bleed¬ 
ing, which would otherwise go on indefinitely, is stopped. 


D4 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


So, too, when a surgeon ties up an artery before dividing it, 
the tight ligature crushes or tears its delicate inner surface, 
and the blood clots where that is injured, and from there a 
coagulum is formed reaching up to the next highest branch of 
the vessel. This becomes more and more solid, and by the time 
the ligature is removed has formed a firm plug in the cut end 
of the artery, which greatlydiminishes the risk of bleeding. 

The Source of Blood-fibrin. Since fresh blood-plasma 
contains no fibrin but does contain considerable quantities of 
other proteids, we look first to these as a possible source of 
the fibrin formed during coagulation. Blood drawn from a 
living animal into one third of its bulk of a cold saturated 
solution of magnesium sulphate and kept cold will not clot 
for a long time. The corpuscles slowly sink in the mixture, 
and after a time considerable quantities of colorless “ salted ” 
plasma can be drawn ofi from its upper part. The salted 
plasma still contains something which can form fibrin, for if 
diluted with six or seven times its volume of water it clots in 
a manner quite similar to pure blood-plasma (though the clot 
is a little less firm); and also, fibrin can be obtained by 
whipping it. 

If salted plasma be saturated with sodium chloride it 
yields a whitish rather sticky precipitate, called plasmine. 
The remaining liquid is then found to have lost the power of 
clotting, but if the plasmine be treated with a little dilute 
saline solution it dissolves, and the solution soon clots, with 
the formation of fibrin. 

The plasmine is not a single body. If its solution before 
it clots have sodium chloride added to it in the proportion 
of about 15#, a white sticky precipitate is formed, and may 
be collected on a filter; it is a substance named fibrinogen . 
If more sodium chloride or some magnesium sulphate be 
added to the filtrate a second white precipitate is obtained: 
this is paraglobuhn. 

Paraglobulin dissolves in dilute solutions of common salt: 
such solutions cannot be made to yield fibrin, though they 
are coagulated with the formation of coagulated proteid 
(p. 10) at the temperature 75° C. (167° F). Purified fibrin¬ 
ogen also dissolves in dilute solution of common salt, and 
such solution is coagulated by heat (56° C. or 133° F.): but 
under certain conditions it clots with the formation of true 
fibrin. During the clotting the fibrinogen disappears, but 


THE CLOTTING OF BLOOD. 


55 


the quantity of fibrin formed never is quite equal in weight 
to the fibrinogen which disappears, so the process is not a 
mere direct transformation of one substance into the other. 

We are thus led to the conclusion that the natural clot¬ 
ting of fresh blood is due to the formation of fibrin from 
fibrinogen which existed in solution in the plasma of the 
circulating blood and has been altered in the clotted, giving 
origin to fibrin. But as normal blood circulating in healthy 
uninjured blood-vessels does not clot nor do pure solutions 
of fibrinogen, we have still to seek the exciting cause of the 
change. 

If to a solution of fibrinogen there be added a few drops 
of blood or of blood-serum, or of the washings of a blood-clot, 
fibrin will be formed; therefore drawn blood and serum and 
natural clot each contain something which can effect the con¬ 
version of fibrinogen into fibrin. This substance is the 
enzyme named fibrin-ferment. 

The Fibrin-ferment. When blood-serum is treated with 
several times its volume of strong alcohol its various proteids 
and most of its salts are precipitated: if the precipitate be 
left standing in alcohol for some months the proteids become 
almost entirely insoluble in water, but a few drops of the 
watery extract cause clotting in a saline solution of fibrin¬ 
ogen, and clearly contain some of the ferment. A very 
minute quantity of the ferment will cause the conversion of 
an indefinite quantity of fibrinogen and does not appear to be 
itself used up in the process: it acts somehow by its mere 
presence, and the clotting of blood is to be relegated to that 
obscure group of physico-chemical processes known as cata¬ 
lytic. Solutions containing the ferment always give some 
proteid reactions and it may be a proteid, but this is doubt¬ 
ful; for the proteid present may be only an impurity. Watery 
solutions of ferment completely lose their activity when 
boiled. 

If fibrinogen be dissolved in the least possible amount of 
dilute caustic potash and a few drops of as pure as possible a 
solution of fibrin ferment, freed from its salts by dialysis, 
be added, clotting does not occur: but it may be brought 
about by the addition of a very small quantity of a calcium 
salt. The presence of some calcium seems to be an essential, 
Out the part it plays is unknown. Of the four substances 
which take part in the coagulation of blood, the fibrinogen 


56 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


primarily determines the quantity of fibrin formed: the more 
fibrinogen the more fibrin, though never quite so much as the 
fibrinogen which disappears. The ferment acting on fibrin¬ 
ogen in the presence of a salt of calcium, in some way causes 
it to become fibrin, but does not itself enter into the fibrin; it 
is not used up in the process, and the amount of fibrin ulti¬ 
mately formed is the same whether much or little ferment 
be present; but the more ferment the quicker the clotting. 
The presence in small quantity of many neutral salts seems to 
favor coagulation, but none except the lime-salts are essential. 
The part they play is obscure; and when present in large pro¬ 
portions they prevent coagulation of blood or plasma, prob¬ 
ably by hindering the formation of ferment. If fresh blood 
be mixed with an equal bulk of a saturated solution of mag¬ 
nesium sulphate (Epsom salts) or of common salt, it will not 
clot; but if this mixture be largely diluted with water, then 
some ferment is formed and clotting takes place. 

The Proximate Causes of Normal Blood Coagulation. 
As all the phenomena of clotting, with the formation of fibrin 
agreeing in all respects with that formed during the natural 
coagulation of drawn blood, can be obtained in artificial solu¬ 
tions of fibrinogen, it is obvious that the process is not, as was 
once supposed, a so-called vital but a purely chemical one: 
but we still are far from a satisfactory explanation why the 
fibrinogen of the plasma does not clot in normal circulating 
blood contained in healthy blood-vessels. It is, in fact, much 
easier to point out what are not the proximate causes of the 
coagulation of drawn blood than what are. 

Blood when removed from the Body and received in a 
vessel comes to rest, cools, and is exposed to the air, from 
which it may receive or to which it may give off gaseous 
bodies. But it is easy to prove that none of these three 
things is the cause of coagulation. Stirring the drawn blood 
and so keeping it in movement does not prevent but hastens 
its coagulation: and blood carefully imprisoned in a living 
blood-vessel, and so kept at rest, will not clot for a long time; 
not until the inner coat of the vessel begins to change from 
the want of fresh blood. Secondly, keeping the blood at the 
temperature of the Body hastens coagulation, and cooling re¬ 
tards it; blood received into an ice-cold vessel and kept sur¬ 
rounded with ice will clot more slowly than blood drawn and 
left exposed to ordinary temperatures. Finally, if the blood 


THE CLOTTING OF BLOOD. 


57 


be collected over mercury from a blood-vessel, without having 
been exposed to the air even for an instant, it will clot per¬ 
fectly. 

The formation of fibrin is then due to changes taking 
place in the blood itself when it is removed from the blood¬ 
vessels; the clotting depends solely upon some rearrangement 
of the blood-constituents, and the primary change seems to 
be the formation of fibrin-ferment. That healthy circulating 
blood contains no ferment but that this forms in drawn blood 
may be shown as follows: Blood is drawn from an artery 
into four separate vessels. To one specimen a large quantity 
of alcohol is added at once; to a second after five minutes, to 
a third after ten, to the fourth after fifteen. The precipitate 
in each is collected and dried, and then treated with water 
which will dissolve any ferment present. The watery extract 
from the first specimen will not cause clotting when added to 
a fibrinogen solution: from the second only slowly; the third 
more quickly, and the fourth quickest of all. It is hence con¬ 
cluded that there is no ferment in perfectly fresh blood, but 
that this begins to form as soon as blood is drawn and for 
some time goes on increasing, so that there is more in blood 
drawn ten minutes than in blood drawn only five. The 
alcohol in each sample precipitates all the ferment already 
present and prevents the formation of more. There is some 
evidence that a good many pale corpuscles disintegrate when 
blood is drawn, and it has been maintained that they then 
give origin to the fibrin-ferment along with other things: but 
of late evidence seems rather to point to the platelets as 
the main source of the ferment. As already stated they 
rapidly break down when blood is removed from the body, 
part of their substance going into solution in the plasma and 
part remaining as a sticky mass which tends to adhere to its 
fellows to form little clumps. If the formation of fibrin in 
clotting blood be watched with the aid of a microscope the 
fibrin threads are seen to appear first in the neighborhood of 
these clumps, and in many cases to radiate from them. More¬ 
over those substances which check or retard the clotting of 
blood also hinder the disintegration of the platelets: and if a 
fine thread be passed through the blood-vessel of a living 
animal fibrin forms around it after a time, and this formation 
is preceded by adhesion to the thread and disintegration of 
platelets. But be the source of the ferment platelets or pale 


58 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


corpuscles or both, we have still the problem why, under 
normal conditions, do not these break down in the circulating 
blood: have perchance the blood-vessels some part in the. 
matter ? 

Relation of the Blood-vessels to Coagulation* As to 

the role of the blood-vessels with respect to coagulation, two 
views are held, between which the facts at present known do 
not permit a decisive judgment to be made; and there may 
be some truth in both. One theory is that the vessels actively 
prevent coagulation by constantly absorbing from the blood 
some substance, as the fibrin-ferment, the presence of which 
is a necessary condition for the formation of fibrin and which 
is supposed to be constantly forming in the blood, but to be 
as steadily removed from it or destroyed by the lining cells of 
the blood-vessels. In support of this opinion is brought for¬ 
ward the fact that it is possible to inject considerable quanti¬ 
ties of a solution of fibrin-ferment into the blood of a living 
animal without causing intravascular coagulation. 

The other view is that the blood-vessels are passive. They 
simply do not excite those changes in the blood constituents 
which give rise to the formation of fibrin-ferment, while 
foreign bodies in contact with the blood do excite these 
changes and so lead to coagulation. In support of this view 
are brought forward the facts that drawn blood clots faster in 
vessels of such shapes that a large surface of blood is exposed 
to foreign contact; and that coagulation takes place rapidly 
in a vessel with a rough interior, while in a chemically clean 
glass vessel it occurs slowly. The experiment already men¬ 
tioned of getting a clot around a thread passed tlirough a blood¬ 
vessel, and also that of getting extensive clotting within the 
blood-vessels by the injection into a vein of extract of the 
thymus body, may be cited as tending to show that the linings 
of the blood-vessels cannot actively prevent coagulation; but 
it may be objected that in the one case locall}^ and in the other 
generally, the ferment is set free in the blood so fast that the 
vessels cannot remove it in time to prevent the formation of 
fibrin. Blood poured out from a torn vessel among other 
tissues of the body often clots very slowly; this may be due 
either to the tissues in general possessing the-power of de¬ 
stroying fibrin-ferment or to their being merely indifferent 
substances not exciting the changes which lead to fibrin 
formation. 


THE CLOTTING OF BLOOD. 


m 


Whatever the part played by the blood-vessels in reference 
to coagulation it is only exhibited when their inner surfaces 
are healthy and uninjured. If their lining be ruptured or 
diseased the blood clots. Accordingly, after death, when 
post-mortem changes have affected the blood-vessels, the 
blood clots in them; but often very slowly, since the vessels 
only gradually alter. If the Body be left in one position 
after death the clots formed in the heart have often a marked 
buffy coat, because the corpuscles have had a long time to 
sink in the plasma before coagulation occurred. In medico¬ 
legal cases it is thus sometimes possible to say what was the 
position of a corpse for some hours after death, although it 
has been subsequently moved. 

Lymph clots like the blood, but not so firmly. The clot 
formed is colorless. 

-^^Composition of the Blood. The average specific gravity 
of human blood is 1055. It has an alkaline reaction, which 
becomes less marked as coagulation occurs. About one half 
of its mass consists of moist corpuscles and the remainder of 
plasma. Exposed in a vacuum, 100 volumes of blood yield 
about 60 of gas consisting of a mixture of oxygen, carbon 
dioxide and nitrogen. 

Chemistry of Serum. Blood-serum is plasma which has 
lost its fibrinogen and gained fibrin-ferment and probably 
some additional paraglobulin; from an analysis of it we can 
draw conclusions as to the plasma. In 100 parts of serum 
there are about 90 parts of water, 8.5 of proteids, and 1.5 of 
fats, salts and other less-known solid bodies. Of the proteids 
present the most abundant are serum-albumin and para¬ 
globulin. Serum-albumin agrees with egg-albumin in coagu¬ 
lating when heated: for this reason serum when boiled sets 
into an opaque white mass, just as the white of an egg does. 
Serum-albumin differs from egg-albumin in not being coagu¬ 
lated by ether; and in the fact that although present in such 
large quantities in the blood, it is not excreted by the kid¬ 
neys, as egg-albumin is, if injected into a blood-vessel. The 
paraglobulin is also precipitated by heat, but may be pre¬ 
cipitated alone by saturation of the serum with magnesium 
sulphate. Fats are present in the serum in small quantity 
except after a meal at which fatty substances have been 
eaten; serum obtained from the blood of an animal soon 
after such a meal is often milky in appearance from the large 


60 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


amount of fats present, instead of being colorless or pale yel¬ 
low and transparent as it is after fasting. The salts dissolved 
in the serum are mainly sodium chloride and carbonate; 
small quantities of sodium, calcium, and magnesium phos¬ 
phates are also present. 

Chemistry of the Red Corpuscles. In these in the fresh 
moist state there are, in 100 parts, 56 of water and 44 of 
solids. Of the solids about one per cent is salts, chiefly potas¬ 
sium phosphate and chloride. The remaining solids contain, 
in 100 parts, 90 of haemoglobin and about 8 of other proteids; 
the residue consists of less well-known bodies. 

Chemistry of the White Corpuscles. Besides much water, 
these yield several proteids, some fats, glycogen (see Chap. 
XXIX) and salts; and smaller quantities of other bodies. 
The predominant salts, like those of the red corpuscles, are 
potassium phosphates. 

Variations in the Composition of the Blood. The above 
statements refer only to the average composition of the 
healthy blood and to its better known constituents. From 
what was said in the last chapter it is clear that the blood 
flowing from any organ will have lost or gained, or gained 
some things and lost others, when compared with the blood 
which entered it. But the losses and gains in particular parts 
of the Body are in such small amount as, with the exception 
of the blood-gases, to elude analysis for the most part: and 
the blood from all parts being mixed in the heart, they 
balance one another and produce a tolerably constant average. 
In health, however, the specific gravity of the blood may vary 
from 1045 to 1075; the red corpuscles also are present in 
greater proportion to the plasma after a meal than before it. 
Healthy sleep in proper amount leads to increase in the pro¬ 
portion of red corpuscles, and want of it tends to diminution 
of their number, as may be recognized in the pallid aspect oi( 
a person who has lost several nights’ rest. 

The proportion of the red corpuscles has a great impor¬ 
tance since, as we shall subsequently see, they serve to carry 
oxygen, which is necessary for the performance of its func¬ 
tions, all over the Body. Ancemia is a diseased condition 
characterized by pallor due to deficiency of red blood-corpus¬ 
cles, and accompanied by languor and listlessness. It is not 
unfrequent in girls on the verge of womanhood, and in per 


THE CLOTTING OF BLOOD. 


61 


sons overworked and confined witliin doors. In such cases 
the best remedies are open-air exercise and good food. 

Summary. Practically the composition of the blood may 
be thus stated: It consists of (1) plasma, consisting of watery 
solutions of serum-albumin, paraglobulin, fibrinogen, sodi¬ 
um and other salts, and extractives of which the most con¬ 
stant are urea, kreatin, and grape-sugar; (2) red corpuscles, 
containing rather more than half their weight of water, the 
remainder being mainly haemoglobin, other proteids, and pot¬ 
ash salts; (3) white corpuscles, consisting of water, various 
proteids, glycogen, and potash salts; (4) the platelets; (5) 
(jases, partly dissolved in the plasma or combined with its 
sodium salts, and partly combined (oxygen) with the haemo¬ 
globin of the red corpuscles. 

Quantity of Blood. The total amount of blood in the 
Body is difficult of accurate determination. It is about ^ 
of the whole weight of the Body, so the quantity in a man 
weighing 75 kilos (165 lbs.) is about 5.8 kilos (12.7 lbs.). Of 
this at any given moment about one fourth would be found in 
the heart, lungs and larger blood-vessels; and equal quantities 
in the vessels of the liver, and in those of the muscles which 
move the skeleton; while the remaining fourth is distributed 
among the remaining parts of the Body. 

The Origin and Fate of the Blood-corpuscles. The white 
blood-corpuscles vary so rapidly and frequently in number in 
the blood that they must be constantly in process of altera¬ 
tion or removal, and formation; their number is largely in¬ 
creased after taking food, even more than that of the red, so 
that their proportion to the red rises, from 1 to 1000 during 
fasting, to 1 to 250 or 300 after a meal. This increase is 
mainly due to increased flow of lymph at this time through 
the lymphatics of the alimentary canal which have much 
lymphoid tissue on their course; and, as already pointed out, 
lymph-corpuscles are constantly multiplying in this tissue 
and are gathered from it by the lymph, to be poured into the 
blood (see also Chap. XXIII). Migrated pale corpuscles of 
the blood and the leucocytes of the lymph retain many of the 
characters of undifferentiated and unspecialized embryonic 
cells; and there is some evidence that they may develop new 
tissues in the repair of injured parts. 

Amphioxus, the lowest undoubted vertebrate animal (see 
Zoology), possesses only colorless corpuscles in its blood. 


62 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Higher and more complex animals need more oxygen and, as 
blood-plasma dissolves very little of that gas, they develop in 
addition the haemoglobin-containing corpuscles which pick 
it up in the gills or lungs and carry it to all parts of the 
Body, leaving it where wanted (see Chap. XXVI). In cold¬ 
blooded vertebrates the red corpuscles are not nearly so many 
in proportion as in the warm-blooded, which use far more 
oxygen. The older view was that the mammalian red cor¬ 
puscle represented the nucleus of one of the white, in which 
haemoglobin had been formed and from about which the rest 
of the corpuscle had disappeared. This, however, does not 
seem to be the case. In adults new red blood-corpuscles are 
formed by the segregation of portions of the protoplasm of 
peculiar cells ( immaioUusts) found in various parts of the 
Body, but especially in the red marrow of certain bones (p. 
95). In the embryo some cells of the liver, and in new-born 
animals (possibly also in adult) some connective-tissue cor¬ 
puscles (p. 112) form new red blood-corpuscles. 

How long an individual red corpuscle lasts is not known, 
nor with certainty how or where it disappears : there is, how¬ 
ever, some reason to believe that many are finally destroyed 
in the spleen (see Chap. XXIII). Their average rate of dis¬ 
appearance and new formation is unknown, but in emergen¬ 
cies (as after severe haemorrhages) they can be reproduced 
with great rapidity. 

Chemistry of Lymph. Lymph is a colorless fluid when 
pure, feebly alkaline, and with a specific gravity of about 
1045. It may be described as blood minus its red corpuscles 
and much diluted, but of course in various parts of the Body 
it will contain minute quantities of substances derived from 
neighboring tissues. It contains a considerable quantity of 
carbon dioxide gas which it gives up in a vacuum, but no un¬ 
combined oxygen, since any of that gas which passes into it 
by diffusion from the blood is immediately picked up by the 
living tissues among which the lymph flows. 



CHAPTER VI. 


THE SKELETON. 

Exoskeleton and Endoskeleton. The skeleton of an 
animal includes all its hard protecting or supporting parts, 
and is met with in two main forms. One is an exoskeleton 
developed in connection with either the superficial or deeper 
layer of the skin, and represented by the shell of a clam, 
the scales of fishes, the horny plates of a turtle, the 
bony plates of an armadillo, and the feathers of birds. 
In man the exoskeleton is but slightly developed, but it 
is represented by the hairs, nails and teeth; for although 
the latter lie within the mouth, the study of development 
shows that they are developed from an offshoot of the skin 
which grows in and lines the mouth long before birth. Hard 
parts formed from structures deeper than the skin constitute 
the endoskeleton , which in man is highly developed and con¬ 
sists of a great many bones and cartilages or gristles, the 
bones forming the mass of the hard framework of the Body, 
while the cartilages finish it off at various parts. This frame¬ 
work is what is commonly meant by the skeleton; it pri¬ 
marily supports all the softer patts and is also arranged so as 
to surround cavities in which delicate organs, as the brain, 
heart or spinal cord, may lie with safety. The gross skeleton 
thus formed is completed and supplemented by another made 
of the connective tissues , which not only, in the shape of 
tough bands or ligaments , tie the bones and cartilages to¬ 
gether, but also in various forms pervade the whole Body as 
a sort of subsidiary skeleton running through all the soft 
organs and forming networks of fibres around their other 
constituents; they make, as it were, a microscopic skeleton 
for the individual modified cells of which the Body is so 
largely composed, and also form partitions between the mus¬ 
cles, cases for such organs as the liver and kidneys, and 
sheaths around the blood vessels. The bony and cartilagin¬ 
ous framework with its ligaments might be called the skele- 

63 


64 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ton of the organs of the Body, and this finer supporting 
meshwork the skeleton of the tissues. Besides forming a 
support in the substance of various organs, the connective 
tissues are often laid down as a sort of packing material in the 
crevices between them; and so widely are they distributed 
everywhere from the skin outside to the lining of the alimen¬ 
tary canal inside, that if some solvent could be employed 
which would corrode away all the rest and leave only these 
tissues, a very perfect model of the whole Body would be left; 
something like a “skeleton leaf,” but far more minute in its 
tracery. 

The Bony Skeleton (Fig. 16). If the hard framework 
of the Body were joined together like the joists and beams of 
a house, the whole mass would be rigid; its parts could not 
move with relation to one another, and we should be unable 
to raise a hand to the mouth or put one foot before another. 
To allow of mobility the bony skeleton is made of many sepa¬ 
rate pieces which are joined together, the points of union be¬ 
ing called articulations , and at many places the bones enter¬ 
ing into an articulation are movably hinged together, forming 
what are known as joints. The total number of bones in the 
Body is more than two hundred in the adult; and the number 
in children is still greater, for various bones which are dis¬ 
tinct in the child (and remain distinct throughout life in 
many lower animals) grow together so as to form one bone in 
the full-grown man. The adult bony skeleton may be de¬ 
scribed as consisting of an axial skeleton , found in the head, 
neck and trunk; and an appendicular skeleton , consisting of 
the bones in the limbs and in the arches (u and s , Fig. 16) 
by which these are carried and attached to the trunk. 

Axial Skeleton. The axial skeleton consists primarily 
of the vertebral column or spine, a side view of which is rep¬ 
resented in Fig. 17. The upper part of this column is com¬ 
posed of twenty-four separate bones, each of which is a ver¬ 
tebra. At the posterior part of the trunk, beneath the 
movable vertebrae, comes the sacrum (£ 1), made up of five 
vertebrae, which in the adult grow together to form one bone, 
and below the sacrum is the coccyx (Co 1-4), consisting of 
four very small tail vertebrae, which in advanced life also 
unite to form one bone. 

On the top of the vertebral column is borne the skull, 
made up of two parts, viz., a great box above which incloses 




THE SKELETON. 65 

the brain and is called the cranium 9 and a large number of 



bones on the ventral side of this which form the skeleton of 








66 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the face. Attached by ligaments to the under side of the 
cranium is the hyoid lone, to which the root of the tongue is 
fixed. 

Of the twenty-four separate vertebrae of the adult the seven 
nearest the skull (Fig. 17, C 1-7) lie in the neck and are 
known as the cervical vertebrce. These are followed by 
twelve others which have ribs attached to them (see Fig. 16) 
and lie at the back of the chest; they are the thoracic or dorsal 
vertebrce {D 1-12). The ribs (Fig. 28) are slender curved 
bones attached by their dorsal ends, called their heads , to the 
thoracic vertebrae and running thence round the sides of the 
chest. In the ventral median line of the latter is the breast¬ 
bone or sternum (c?, Fig. 16). Each rib near its sternal end 
ceases to be bony and is composed of cartilage. 

These parts—skull, hyoid bone, vertebral column, ribs,, 
and sternum—constitute the axial skeleton. 

The Thoracic or Dorsal Vertebrae. If a single vertebra, 
say the eleventh from the skull, be examined carefully it will 
be found to consist of the following parts (Figs. 18 and 19): 

First a bony mass, C, rounded on the sides and flattened 
on each end where it is turned towards the vertebrae above and 
below it. This stout bony cylinder is the “ body ” or centrum 
of the vertebra, and the series of vertebral bodies (Fig. 17) 
forms in the trunk that bony partition between the dorsal 
and ventral cavities of the body spoken of in Chapter I. To 
the dorsal side of the body is attached an arch—the neural 
arch, A, which with the back of the body incloses a space, 
Fv, the neural ring. In the tube formed by the rings of the 
successive vertebrae lies the spinal cord. Projecting from the 
dorsal side of the neural arch is a long bony bar, Ps, the 
spinous process : and the projections of these processes from 
the various vertebrae can be felt through the skin all down 
the middle of the back. Hence the name of spinal column 
often given to the whole back-bone. 

Six other processes arise from the arch of the vertebra: 
two project forwards, i.e., towards the head; these, Pas , are 
the anterior articular processes and have smooth surfaces, 
covered with cartilage, on their dorsal sides. A pair of simi¬ 
lar posterior articular processes, Pai, runs back from the 
neural arch, and these have smooth surfaces on their ventral 
aspects. In the natural position jf the vertebra, the smooth 
surfaces of its anterior articular processes fit upon the poste- 



THE SKELETON. 


67 


rior articular processes of the vertebra next in front, forming 
a joint, and the two processes are united by ligaments. Sim- 



Fig.18. 


Fig. 19. 


Fig. 18.—A thoracic vertebra seen from behind, i.e., the end turned from the head. 

Fig. 19.—Two thoracic vertebrae viewed from the left side, and in their natural 
relative positions. C , the body ; A, neural arch ; Fv, the neural ring ; Ps, spinous 
process; Pas, anterior articular process ; Pai, posterior articular process ; Pt , 
transverse process ; Ft, facet for articulation with the tubercle of a rib ; Fes, Fci, 
articular surfaces on the centrum for articulation with a rib. 


ilarly its posterior articular processes form joints (Fig. 19) 
with the anterior articular processes of the vertebra next be¬ 
hind. 

The remaining processes are the transverse , Pt , which 
run outwards and a little dorsally. Each of these has a 
smooth articular surface, Ft , near its outer end. 

On the “ body ” are seen two articular surfaces on each 
side: one, Fes , at its anterior, the other, Fci , at its posterior 
«nd, and both close to the attachment of the neural arch. 
Each of these surfaces forms with corresponding areas on 
the vertebrae in front and behind a pit into which the end 
of a rib fits and the rib attached in this way to the anterior 
part of the “ body 99 is also fitted on, a little way from its 
dorsal end, to the articular surface at the end of the transverse 
process. 

The Segments of the Axial Skeleton. If a thoracic verte¬ 
bra, say the first (Fig. 20), be detached with the pair of ribs, 
Cv, belonging to it and the bit of the sternum, 8 , to which 
these ribs are fixed ventrally, we would find a bony parti¬ 
tion formed by the body of the vertebra, lying between 






68 


THE HUMAN BODY. 



Fig. 20.—Diagrammatic representa¬ 
tion of a segment of the axial skeleton 


two arches which surround cavities. The dorsal cavity 
inclosed by the “body” and “neural arch” contained origi¬ 
nally part of the spinal cord. The other ring, made up by 

the body of the vertebra dor- 
sally, the sternum ventrally, 
and the ribs on the sides, sur¬ 
rounds the chest-cavity with 
its contents. All of these parts 
together form a typical seg¬ 
ment of the axial skeleton,, 
which, however, only attains 
this completeness in the tho¬ 
racic region of the trunk. In 
the skull it is greatly modified; 

V, a vertebra; C, Cv, ribs articulating j • ii m p l nwpr 

above with the body and transverse pro- 111 L,lt3 neLK tlllU me lOWei 

cess of the vertebra; S, the breast-bone, n f fU p fmnV fl-, p qvp 

The lighter-shaded part between S and G P art 01 tne trUnK ri DS aie 
is the rib-cartiiage. either absent or very small, 

appearing only as processes of the vertebrae; and the sternal 
portion is wanting altogether. 

Nevertheless we may regard the whole axial skeleton as 
made up of a series of such segments placed one in front of 
another, but having different portions of the complete seg¬ 
ment much modified or rudimentary or even altogether 
wanting in some regions. Parts which in this way really 
correspond to one another though they differ in detail, which 
are so to speak different varieties of one thing, are said in 
anatomical language to be homologous to one another; and 
when they succeed one another in a row, as the trunk seg¬ 
ments do, the homology is spoken of as serial. 

The Cervical Vertebrae. In the cervical region of the 
vertebral column the bodies of the vertebrae are smaller than 
in the dorsal, but the arches 
are larger; the spinous pro¬ 
cesses are short and often bifid 
and the transverse processes 
appear to be perforated by a 
canal, the vertebral foramen . 

The bony bar bounding this 
aperture on the ventral side, 
however, is in reality a very 
small rib which has grown into ‘““'•process, 
continuity with the body and true transverse process of 



Fit 

Pai 





THE SKELETON . 


69 


the vertebra, although separate in very early life: the trans¬ 
verse process proper boun.ds the vertebral foramen dorsally. 
In this latter during life runs an artery, which ultimately 
enters the skull-cavity. 

The Atlas and Axis. The first and second cervical verte¬ 
brae differ considerably from the rest. The first, or atlas 
(Fig. 22), which carries the head, has a very small body, Aa, 
and a large neural ring. This ring is subdivided by a cord, 
the transverse ligament, L, into a dorsal moiety in which the 
spinal cord lies and a ventral into which the bony process D 
projects. This is the odontoid process , and arises from the 
front of the axis or second cervical vertebra (Fig. 23). 
Around this peg the atlas rotates when the head is turned 
from side to side, carrying the skull (which* articulates with 
the large hollow surfaces Fas) with it. 

The odontoid process really represents a large piece of the 
body of the atlas which in early life separates from its own 
vertebra and becomes united to the axis. 

The Lumbar Vertebrae (Fig. 24) are the largest of all the 
movable vertebrae and have no ribs attached to them. Their 
spines are short and stout and lie in a more horizontal plane 



Ap 


Fig. 23. 


Fig. 22. 


Fig. 22 —The atlas. Fig. 23.—The axis. Aa. body of atlas; D, odontoid process; 
Fas, facet on front of atlas with which the skull articulates; and in Fig. 23, ante¬ 
rior articular surface of axis; L . transverse ligament; Frt, vertebral foramen; Ap, 
neural arch; Tp, spinous process. 

than those of the vertebrae in front. The articular and trans¬ 
verse processes are also short and stout. 

The Sacrum, which is represented along with the last lum¬ 
bar vertebra in Fig. 25, consists in the adult of a single bone; 
but cross-ridges on its ventral surface indicate the limits of 
the five separate vertebrae of which it is composed in 
childhood. It is somewhat triangular in form, its base 



70 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


being directed upwards and articulating with the under 
surface of the body of the fifth lumbar vertebra. On its 
sides are large surfaces to which the arch bearing the lower 



Fig. 24.—-A lumbar vertebra seen from the left side. Ps , spinous process; Pas, 
anterior articular process; Pai , posterior articular process; Pt, transverse process. 



Fig. 25.—The last, lumbar vertebra and the sacrum seen from the ventral side. 
Fsa, anterior sacral foramina. 

limbs is attached (see Fig. 16 ). Its ventral surface is con¬ 
cave and smooth and presents four pairs of anterior sacral 






















THE SKELETON. 


71 


foramina , Fsa, which communicate with the neural canal. 
Its dorsal surface, convex and roughened, has four similar 
pairs of posterior sacral foramina . 

The coccyx (Fig. 26) calls for no special description. The 
four bones which grow together, or anJcylose , 
to form it, represent only the bodies of vertebrae, 
and even those incompletely. It is in reality 
a short tail, although not visible as such from 
the exterior. 

The Spinal Column as a Whole. The ver¬ 
tebral column is in a man of average height 
about twenty-eight inches long. Viewed from 
the side (Fig. 17) it presents four curvatures; 
one with the convexity forwards in the cervical The coccyx, 
region is followed, in the thoracic, by a curve with its concavity 
towards the chest. In the lumbar region the curve has again 
its convexity turned ventrally, while in the sacral and coccy¬ 
geal regions the reverse is the case. These curvatures give the 
whole column a good deal of springiness such as would be 
absent were it a straight rod, and this is farther secured by the 
presence of compressible elastic pads, the intervertebral disks, 
made up of cartilage and connective tissue, which lie between 
the bodies of those vertebrae which are not ankylosed together, 
and fill up completely the empty spaces left between the 
bodies of the vertebrae in Fig. 17. By means of these pads, 
moreover, a certain amount of movement is allowed between 
each pair of vertebrae; and so the spinal column can be bent 
to considerable extent in any direction; while the movement 
between any two vertebrae is so limited that no sharp bend 
can take place at any one point, such as might tear or other¬ 
wise injure the spinal cord contained in the neural canal. 
The amount of movement permitted is greatest in the cervical 
region. 

In the case of the movable vertebrae, the arch is somewhat 
narrowed where it joins the body on each side; this nar¬ 
rowed stalk is the pedicle (li, Fig. 19), while the broader 
remaining portion of the arch is its lamina. Between 
the pedicles of two contiguous vertebrae there are in this 
wav left apertures, the intervertebral holes which form a 
series on each side of the vertebral column, and one of which, 
Fi , is shown between the two dorsal vertebrae in Fig. 19. 
Through these foramina nerves run out from the spinal cord 



72 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Icl 


to various regions of the Body. The sacral foramina, anterior 
and posterior, are the representatives of these apertures, but 
modified in arrangement, on account of the fusion of the 
arches and bodies of the vertebras between which they lie. 

Sternum. The sternum or breast-lone (Fig. 27 and d. 
Fig. 16) is wider from side to side than dorso-ventrally. It 
consists in the adult of three pieces, and seen from the ven¬ 
tral side has somewhat the form of a dagger. The piece M 
nearest the head is called the handle or manubrium. , and pre¬ 
sents anteriorly a notch, Id, on each side, with which the 
collar-bone articulates ( u , Fig. 16); farther back are two 
other notches, Icl and Ic2, to which the sternal ends of the 
first and second ribs are attached. The middle piece, C, of 
the sternum is called the body; it completes the notch for 
Is the second rib and has on its sides others, 

Ic 3-7, for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, 
mmi and seventh ribs. The last piece of the 
sternum, P, is the ensiform or xiphoid 
process; it. is composed of cartilage, and 
has no ribs attached to it. 

The Ribs. (Fig. 28). There are twelve 
pairs of ribs, each being a slender curved 
bone attached dorsally to the body and 
transverse process of a vertebra in the 
manner already mentioned, and continued 
ventrally by a costal cartilage. In the 
case of the anterior seven pairs, the costal 
cartilages are attached directly to the sides 
of the breast-bone; the next three carti¬ 
lages are each attached to the cartilage of 
the preceding rib, while the cartilages of 
it! 4 the eleventh and twelfth ribs are quite 

JUG. 27.—The sternum ^ 

seen °n its ventral fispeet, unattached ventrally, so these are called 

M, manubrium; C, body; J 

p, xiphoid process; id, the free or lioatmq ribs. The convexity 

notch forthecollar-bone; £ ' , .. . , , . ^ J 

ic 1 - 7 , notches for the or each curved rib is turned outwards so 
as to give roundness to the sides of the 
chest and increase its cavity, and each slopes downwards from 
its vertebral attachment, so that its sternal end is consider¬ 
ably lower than its dorsal. 

The Skull. (Fig. 29) consists of twenty-two bones in the 
adult, of which eight, forming the cranium., are arranged so 
as to inclose the brain-case and protect the auditory organ. 





THE SKELETON. 


73 


while the remaining fourteen support the face and sur¬ 
round the mouth, the nose, and the eye-sockets. 



Fig. 28.—The ribs of the left side, with the dorsal and two lumbar vertebrae, the 
rib-cartilages and the sternum: a, first and, 6, twelfth thoracic vertebra; c, first 
lumbar vertebra. 

Cranium. The cranium is a box with a thick floor and 
thinner walls and roof. Its floor or base represents in the 
head (as is depicted in the diagram Fig. 2) that partition be¬ 
tween the dorsal and ventral cavities which in the trunk is 
made up of the bodies of the vertebrae. In very early life it 




74 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


presents in the middle line a series of four bones, the hast - 
occipital, basi-sphenoid, presphenoid, and basi-ethmoid, which 
answer pretty much to the bodies of four vertebrae, and have 
attached to them the thin bones which inclose the skull-cavity 
(which may be likened to an enlarged neural canal) on the 
sides and top. In the Human Body, however, these bones 

Tsp 



Fig. 29.—A side -view of the skull. O, occipital bone ; T, temporal; F>\ parie¬ 
tal ; F, frontal; S, sphenoid ; Z, malar ; Mx , maxilla; N, nasal; E, ethmoid; L, 
lachrymal; Md, inferior maxilla. 


very soon ankylose with others or with one another; although 
they remain distinct throughout life in the skulls of very 
many lower animals. On the base of the skull, besides many 
small apertures by which nerves and blood-vessels pass in or 
out, is a large aperture, the foramen magnum, through which 
the spinal cord passes in to join the brain. 







THE SKELETON. 


75 



The cranial bones are the following: 

1. The occipital lone (Fig. 29, 0), unpaired and having in 
it the foramen magnum . It is made up by the fusion of the 
basi-occipital with other flatter bones. 

2. The frontal lone (Fig. 29, F ), also 
unpaired in the adult, but in the 
child each half is a separate bone. 3. 

A pair of thin platelike parietal lones 
(Fig. 29, Pr) which meet one another 
along the middle line in the top of the 
skull, and roof-in a great part of the 
cranial cavity. 4. A pair of temporal 
lones (Fig. 29, T), one on each side of 
the skull below the parietal. On 
each temporal bone is a large aperture 
leading into the ear-cavity, the essen- 

tial parts of the organs of hearing Fjo ^ of the 

being contained m these bones. 5. skull. The lower jaw has been 
° 7 .77 i 1,7 removed. At the lower part 

lhe sphenoid lone, made up by the of the figure is the hard palate 

. a ,. 7 . 7 , forming the roof of the mouth 

union 01 the basi-sphenoid and pre- and surrounded by the upper 

sphenoid (lying on the base of skull in the plii-ed^peidi^sof thepos^ 

front of the basi-occipital) with one aboSe SSTmiddle onKgum 

another and with flatter bones, is seen *<££* 

partly (Fig. 29, S) on the sides of the 

cranium in front of the temporals. 6. atlas, on its sides. 

The ethmoid, like the sphenoid, single in the adult, is really 
made up by the union of a single median lasi-etlimoid with 
a pair of lateral bones. It closes the skull-cavity in front, 
and lies between it and the top of the nasal chambers, being 
perforated by many small holes through which the nerves of 
smell pass. A little bit of it is seen on the inner side of the 
eye socket at E in Fig. 29. 

Facial Skeleton. The majority of the face-bones are in 
pairs; two only being single and median. One of these is 
the lower jaw-bone or interior maxilla (Fig. 29, MP)\ the 
other is the vomer, which ferms part of the partition between 
the two nostrils. 

The paired face-bones are: 1. The maxillce, or upper jaw¬ 
bones ( Mx , Fig. 29), one on each side, carrying the upper 
row of teeth and forming a great part of the hard palate , 
which separates the mouth from the nose. 2. The palatine 
lones, completing the skeleton of the hard palate, and behind 



76 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


which the nose communicates by the posterior nares (Fig. 30) 
with the throat-cavity, so that air can pass in or out in breath¬ 
ing. 3. The malar bones, or cheek-bones, (Z, Fig. 29.) lying 
beneath and on the outside of the orbit on each side. 4. The 
nasal bones (N, Fig. 29), roofing in the nose. 5. The lach¬ 
rymal bones ( L , Fig. 29), very small and thin and lying be¬ 
tween the nose and orbit. 6. The inferior turbinate bones , 
lying inside the nose, one in each nostril-chamber. 

The Hyoid. Besides the cranial and facial bones there 
is, as already pointed out, one other, the hyoid (Fig. 31), 
which really belongs to the skull, although it lies in the 
neck. It can be felt in the front of the throat, just above 
u Adam’s apple.” The hyoid bone is U-shaped, with its con- 

M vexity turned ventrally, and consists of a 
body and two pairs of processes called cor¬ 
nua. The smaller cornua (Fig. 31, 3) are 
attached to the base of the skull by long 
Fig. 3i.—The hyoid ligaments. These ligaments in many ani- 
great cornua^ * J mals are represented by bones, so that the 
small cornua. hyoid, with them, forms a bony arch at¬ 

tached to the base of the skull much as the ribs are attached 
to the bodies of the vertebrae. In fishes behind this hyoidean 
arch come several others which bear the gills; and in the 
very young Human Body these also are represented, though 
they almost entirely disappear long before birth. The hyoid, 
then, with its cornua and ligaments answers pretty much to 
a gill-arch, or really to parts of two gill-arches, since the 
great and small cornua belong to originally separate arches 
present at an early stage of development. It is a remnant of 
a structure which has no longer any use in the Human Body; 
but in the young frog-tadpole parts answering to it carry 
gills and have clefts between them which extend into the 
throat just as in fishes. The gills are lost afterwards and the 
clefts closed up when the frog gets its lungs and begins to 
breathe by them. In the embryonic human being these gill- 
clefts are also present and several more behind them, but the 
arches between them do not bear gills, and the clefts them¬ 
selves are closed long before birth. As they have no use their 
presence is hard to account for; those who accept the doc¬ 
trine of evolution regard them as developmental reminis¬ 
cences of an extremely remote ancestor in which they were 
of functional importance somewhat as in the tadpole: of 


THE SKELETON. 


77 


-course this does not mean that men were developed from 
tadpoles. 

The Appendicular Skeleton. This consists of the 
shoulder-girdle and the bones of the fore limbs, and the 
pelvic girdle and the bones of the posterior limbs. The two 
supporting girdles in their natural position with reference to 
the trunk skeleton are represented in Fig. 32. 

The Shoulder-girdle, or Pectoral Arch. This is made 
up, on each side, of the scapula or shoulder-Made, and the 
clavicle or collar-bone. 

The scapula (S, Fig. 32) is a flattish triangular bone 
which can readily be felt on the back of the thorax. It is 
not directly articulated to the axial skeleton, but lies im¬ 
bedded in the muscles and other parts outside the ribs on each 
side of the vertebral column. From its dorsal side arises a 
crest to which the outer end of the collar-bone is fixed, and 
on its outer edge is a shallow cup into which the top of the 
arm-bone fits: this hollow is known as the glenoid fossa . 

The collar-hone (C, Fig. 32) is cylindrical and attached at 
its inner end to the sternum as shown in the figure, fitting 
into the notch represented at Id in Fig. 27. 

The Fore Limb. In the limb itself (Fig. 33) are thirty 
bones. The largest, a, lies in the upper arm, and is called the 
humerus . At the elbow the humerus is succeeded by two 
bones, the radius and ulna, c and h, which lie side by side, 
the radius being on the thumb side. At the distal ends of 
these bones come eight small ones, closely packed and forming 
the wrist, or carpus. Then come five cylindrical bones 
which can be felt through the soft parts in the palm of the 
hand; one for the thumb, and one for each of the fingers. 
These are the metacarpal hones, and are distinguished as first, 
second, third, and so on, the first being that of the thumb. 
In the thumb itself are two bones, and in each finger three, 
arranged in rows one after the other; these bones are all called 
phalanges. 

The Pelvic Girdle (Fig. 32). This consists of a large 
bone, the os innominatum, Oc, on each side, which is firmly 
fixed dorsally to the sacrum and meets its fellow in the mid¬ 
dle ventral line. In the child each os innominatum consists 
of three bones, viz., the ilium, the ischium, and pubis. 
Where these three bones meet and finally ankylose there is a 
deep socket, the acetabulum, into which the head of the thigh- 


78 


THE HUMAN BOB 7. 


bone fits (see Fig. 16). Between the pubic and ischial bones 
is the largest foramen in the whole skeleton, known as the 
doorlike or thyroid foramen. The pubic bone lies above 



Fig. 32.— The skeleton of the trunk and the limb arches seen from the front. C, 
clavicle; S, scapula; Oc, innominate bone attached to the side of the sacrum dor- 
sally and meeting its fellow at the pubic symphysis in the ventral median line. 

and the ischial below it. The ilium forms the upper expanded 
portion of the os innominatum to which the line drawn from 
Oc in Fig. 32 points. 

The Hind Limb. In this there are thirty bones, as in the 
fore limb, but not quite similarly arranged; there being one 
less at the ankle than in the wrist, and one at the knee not 
present at the elbow-joint. The thigh-bone or femur (a. 
Fig. 34) is the largest bone in the body and extends from the 
hip to the knee-joint. It presents above a large rounded 
head which fits into the acetabulum and, below, it is also 





THE SKELETON. 


79 


enlarged and presents smooth surfaces which meet the bones 
of the leg. Ihese latter are two in number, known as the 
tibia, c, or shin-bone, and fibula, cl/ the tibia being on the 
gi eat-toe side. In front of the knee-joint is the knee-cap, or 
patella, b. 



Fig. 33. Fig. 34. 

Fig. 33.— The hone 1 ! of the arm. a , humerus; b. ulna; c. radius: d the carpus; 
e, the fifth metacarpal: f. the three phalanges of the fifth digit (little finger); g, 
the phalanges of the pollex (thumb). 

Fig. 34 -Bones of the leg a, femur; 6, patella: c, tibia: d, fibula; h , calca- 
neuin; e, remaining tarsal bones; /, metatarsal .tones; g, phalanges. 



At the distal end of the leg-bones comes the foot, consist¬ 
ing of tarsus, metatarsus , and phalanges. The tarsus, which 
answers to the carpus of the fore limb, is made up of seven 
irregular bones, the largest being the heel-bone, or calcaneum , 




80 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


h. The metatarsus consists of five bones lying side by side, 
and each carries a toe at its distal end. In the great toe (or 
hallux) there are two phalanges, in each of the others three, 
arranged as in the fingers, but smaller. 

Comparison of the Anterior and Posterior Limbs. It is 
clear that the skeletons of the arm and leg correspond pretty 



Fig. 35.—The skeleton of the arm and leg. H , the humerus; Cd . its articular 
head which fits into the glenoid fossa of the scapula; £7, the ulna; R, the radius: 
O, the olecranon; Fe, the femur; P, the patella; Ft, the fibula; T, the tibia. 

closely to one another. They are in fact quite alike in very 
early life, and their differences at birth depend upon their 
taking different ways as they develop from their primitive 


THE SKELETON. 


81 


simplicity; as both may be regarded as modifications of the 
same original structure, they are homologous. The pelvic 
girdle clearly corresponds generally to the pectoral arch, the 
tibia and fibula to the radius and ulna; the five metatarsal 
bones to the five metacarpal, and the phalanges of the toes to 
those of the thumb and fingers. On the other hand, there is 
in the arm no separate bone at the elbow-joint corresponding 
to the patella at the knee, but the ulna bears above a bony 
process, the olecranon (0, Fig. 35), which at first is a separate 
bone and is the representative of the patella. There are in 
the carpus eight bones and in the tarsus but seven. The 



Fig. 36.—Diagram showing the relation of the pectoral arch to the axial 
skeleton. 

astragalus of the tarsus ( Ta, Fig. 38) represents, however, two 
bones which have grown together. The elbow-joint bends 
ventrally and the knee-joint dorsally. 

Comparing the limbs as a whole, greater differences come 
to light, differences which are 
mainly correlated with the dif¬ 
ferent uses of the two limbs. 

The arms, serving as prehensile 
organs, have all their parts as 
movable as is consistent with 
the requisite strength, while 

.. . • i i Fig. 37.—Diagram showing f the at- 

the lower limbs, having to bear tachment of the pelvic arch to the axial 

the whole weight of the Body, skeIeton - 

require to have their parts much more firmly knit together. 
Accordingly we find the shoulder-girdle, represented red in 
the diagram (Fig. 36), only directly attached to the axial 
skeleton by the union of the inner ends of the clavicles with 
the sternum, and capable of considerable independent move¬ 
ment, as seen, for instance, in “ shrugging the shoulders.” 



82 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The pelvic arch, on the contrary, is firmly and immovably 
fixed to the sides of the sacrum. The socket of the scapula, 
into which the head of the humerus fits, is very shallow and 
allows a far greater range of movement than is permitted by 
the deeper socket on the pelvis, into which the head of the 
femur fits. Further, if we hold the right humerus tightly 
in the left hand and do not allow it to move, we caii still 
move the forearm bones so as to turn the palm of the hand 
either up or down: no such movement is possible between 
the tibia and fibula. Finally, in the foot the bones are much 
less movable than in the hand, and are arranged so as to make 
a springy arch (Fig. 38) which bears behind on the calcaneum, 
Ca, and in front on the distal ends of the metatarsal bones. 
Os; over the crown of the arch, at Ta, is the surface with 


T a 



M5 T ' Cli * * Sfil 


Fig. 38.—The bones of the foot. Ca, calcaneum, or os calcis ; Ta. articular sur¬ 
face for tibia on the astragalus ; N. scaphoid bone ; Cl. Cli, first and second 
cuneiform bones ; Cb, cuboid bone ; Ml, metatarsal bone of great toe. 


which the leg-bones articulate and on which the weight of 
the Body bears in standing. 

The toes, too, are far less movable than the fingers, and 
this difference is especially well marked between the great 
toe and the thumb. The latter can be made to meet each of 
the finger-tips and so the hand can seize and manipulate very 
small objects, while this power of opposing the first digit to 
the rest is nearly absent in the foot of civilized man. In 
children, however, who have never worn boots, and in savages, 
the great toe is far more movable, though it never forms as 
complete a thumb as in many apes, which use their feet, as 
well as their hands, for prehension. By practice, however, 
our own toes can be made much more mobile than they 
usually are, so that the foot can to a certain extent replace 
the hand; as has been illustrated in the ease of persons born 






TEE SKELETON. 


83 


without hands who have learned to write and paint with 
their toes. 

Peculiarities of the Human Skeleton. These are largely 
connected with the division of labor between the fore and 
hind limbs referred to above, which is carried farther in man 
than in any other creature. Even the highest apes frequently 
use their fore limbs in locomotion and their hind limbs in 
prehension, and we find accordingly that anatomically they 
present less differentiation of hand and foot. The other more 
important characteristics of the human skeleton are correlated 
for the most part with the maintenance of the erect posture, 
which is more complete and habitual in man than in the 
animals most closely allied to him anatomically. These 
peculiarities, however, only appear fully in the adult. In the 
infant the head is proportionately larger, which gives the 
centre of gravity of the Body a comparatively very high posi¬ 
tion and renders the maintenance of the erect posture difficult 
and insecure. The curves of the vertebral column are nearly 
absent, and the posterior limbs are relatively very short. In 
all these points the infant approaches more closely than the 
adult to the ape. The subsequent great relative length of the 
posterior limbs, which grow disproportionately fast in child¬ 
hood as compared with the anterior, makes progression on 
them more rapid by giving a longer stride and at the same 
time makes it almost impossible to go on “all fours” except 
by crawling on the hands and knees. In other Primates this 
disproportion between the anterior and posterior limbs does 
not occur to nearly the same extent. 

In man the skull is nearly balanced on the top of the 
vertebral column, the occipital condyles which articulate with 
the atlas being about its middle (Fig. 30), so that but little 
effort is needed to keep the head erect. In four-footed beasts, 
on the contrary, the skull is carried on the front end of the 
horizontal vertebral column and needs special ligaments to 
sustain it. For instance, in the ox and sheep there is a great 
elastic cord running from the cervical vertebras to the back 
of the skull and helping to hold up the head. Even in the 
highest apes the skull does not balance on the top of the 
spinal column; the face part is much heavier than the back # 
while in man the face parts are relatively smaller and the cra¬ 
nium larger, so that the two nearly equipoise. To keep the 
head erect and look things straight in the face, “ like a man,” 


84 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


is for the apes far more fatiguing, and so they cannot long 
maintain that position. 

The human spinal column, gradually widening from the 
neck to the sacrum, is well fitted to sustain the weight of the 
head, upper limbs, etc., carried by it; and its curvatures, 
which are peculiarly human, give it considerable elasticity 
combined with strength. The pelvis, to the sides of which 
the lower limbs are attached, is proportionately very broad in 
man, so that the balance can be more readily maintained 
during lateral bending of the trunk. The arched instep and 
broad sole of the human foot are also very characteristic. 
The majority of four-footed beasts, as horses, walk on the 
tips of their toes and fingers; and those animals, as bears and 
apes, which like man place the tarsus also on the ground, or in 
technical language are plantigrade, have a much less marked 
arch there. The vaulted human tarsus, composed of a num¬ 
ber of small bones, each of which can glide a little over its 
neighbors, but none of which can move much, is admirably 
calculated to break any jar which might be transmitted to 
the spinal column by the contact of the sole with the ground 
at each step. A well-arched instep is therefore rightly con¬ 
sidered a beauty; it makes progression easier, and by its 
springiness gives elasticity to the step. In London flat-footed"', 
candidates for appointment as policemen are rejected, as they 
cannot stand the fatigue of walking the daily “ beat.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF BONE. JOINTS. 

Gross Structure of the Bones. The bones of the Body 
have all a similar structure and composition, but on account 
of differences in shape they are divided by anatomists into 
the following groups: (1) Long bones , more or less cylindrical 
in form, like the bones of the thigh and arm, leg and forearm, 
metacarpus, metatarsus, fingers and toes. (2) Tabular bones , 
in the form of expanded plates, like the bones on the roof and 
sides of the skull, and the shoulder-blades. (3) Short bones , 
rounded or angular in form and not much greater in one 
diameter than in another, like the bones of the tarsus and 
carpus. (4) Irregular bones , including all which do not fit 
well into any of the preceding groups, and commonly lying 
in the middle line of the Body and divisible into similar 
halves, as the vertebrae. Living bones have a bluish-white 
color and possess considerable elasticity, which is best seen in 
long slender bones such as the ribs. 

To get a general idea of the structure of a bone, we may 
select the humerus for examination. Externally in the fresh 
state it is covered by a dense white fibrous membrane very 
closely adherent to it and containing many small blood-vessels. 
This membrane is the periosteum; on its under side new 
osseous tissue is formed while the bone is still growing, and 
all through life it is concerned in maintaining the nutrition 
of the bone, which dies if it be stripped off. The periosteum 
covers the whole surface of the bone except its ends in the 
elbow and shoulder joints; the surfaces there which come into 
contact with other bones and glide over them in the move¬ 
ments of the joint have no periosteum, but are covered by 
a thin layer of gristle, known as. the articular cartilage. Very 
early in the development of the Body the bone in fact was 
represented entirely by cartilage; but afterwards nearly all 
this was replaced by osseous tissue, leaving only a thin car¬ 
tilaginous layer at the ends. 


85 


86 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The bone itself, Fig. 39, consists of a central nearly cylin¬ 
drical portion or shaft , extending between the dotted lines x 
and z in the figure, and two enlarged articular extremities. 



° bisected lengthwise, a. 

Fig. 39.—The right humerus, seen marrow-cavity; b, hard 

from the front. For description, see bone; c, spongy bone; 

text. d, articular cartilage. 

On the upper articular extremity is the rounded surface, 
Cp, which enters into the shoulder-joint, fitting against the 











STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF BONE. JOINTS. 87 

glenoid cavity of the scapula; and on the lower are the simi¬ 
lar surfaces, Cpl and Tr , which articulate with the radius and 
ulna respectively. Besides carrying the articular surfaces, 
each extremity presents several prominences. On the upper 
are those marked T7nj and Tm (the greater and smaller tro¬ 
chanters) , which give attachment to muscles; and similar 
eminences, the external and internal condyles , El and Em, 
are seen on the lower end. Besides these, several bony ridges 
and rough patches on the shaft indicate places to which mus¬ 
cles of the arm were fixed. 

Internal Structure. If the bone be divided longitudinally, 
it will be seen that its shaft is hollow, the space being known 
as the medullary cavity , and in the fresh bone filled with 
marrow. Fig. 40 represents such a longitudinal section. It 
will be seen that the marrow-cavity does not reach into the ar¬ 
ticular extremities, but that there the bone has a loose spongy 
texture, except a thin layer on the surface. In the shaft, on 
the other hand, the outer compact layer is much the thicker, 
the spongy or cancellated bone forming only a thin stratum 
immediately around the medullary cavity. To the naked 
eye the cancellated bone appears made up of a trellis-work of 
thin bony plates which intersect in all directions and sur¬ 
round cavities rather larger than the head of an ordinary 
pin; the compact bone, on the contrary, appears to have no 
cavities in it until it is examined with a magnifying-glass. 
In the spaces of the spongy portion lies, during life, a sub¬ 
stance known as the red marrow , which is quite different from 
the yellow fatty marrow lying in the central cavity of the 
shaft. 

Microscopic Structure of Bone. The microscope shows 
that the compact bone contains cavities and only differs from 
the spongy portion in the fact that these are much smaller, 
and the hard true bony plates surrounding them much more 
numerous in proportion than in the spongy parts. If a 
thin transverse section of the shaft of the humerus be 
examined (Fig. 41) with a microscope magnifying twenty 
diameters, it will be seen that numerous openings exist all 
over the compact parts of the section and gradually become 
larger as this passes into the cancellated part, next the medul¬ 
lary cavity. These openings are the cross-sections of tubes 
known as the Haversian canals , which ramify all through the 
bone, running mainly in the direction of its long axis, but 


88 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


united by numerous cross or oblique branches as seen in the 
longitudinal section (Fig. 42). The outermost ones open on 
the surface of the bone beneath the periosteum, and in the 
living bone blood-vessels run from this through the Haversian 
canals and convey materials for its growth and nourishment. 



A 

Fig. 41.— A, a transverse section of the ulna, natural size; showing the medullary 
cavity. B , the more deeply shaded part of A magnified twenty diameters. 


The average diameter of the Haversian canals is 0.05 mm. 
(?h> of an inch). 

Around each Haversian canal lies a set of plates, or lamellce, 
of hard bony substance (see the transverse section Fig. 41), 
each canal with its lamellae forming an Haversian system: 
and the whole bone is made up of a number of such systems, 
with the addition of a few lamellae lying in the corners be¬ 
tween them, and a certain number which run around the 
whole bone on its outer and inner surfaces. In the spongy 



STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF BONE. JOINTS. 89 


parts of the bone the Haversian canals are very large and the 
intervening lamellae few in number. 

Between the lamellae lie small cavities, the lacuna, each of 
which is lenticular in form, somewhat like the space which 

would be inclosed by two watch- 
glasses joined by their edges. 
From the lacunae many extremely 
fine branching canals, the canali¬ 
culi, radiate and penetrate the 
bony lamellae in all directions. 
The innermost canaliculi of each 
system open into the central Ha¬ 
versian canal; and those of various 



lacunae intercommunicating-, these 


Fig. 42 .—A thin longitudinal sec 
>n of be 
diameters. 

fine tubes form a set of passages 
through which liquid which has transuded from the blood¬ 
vessels in the Haversian canals can ooze all through the 
bone. The lacunae and canaliculi are shown in Fig. 42. 

In the living bone a granular nucleated cell lies in each 
lacuna. These cells, or bone-corpuscles, are the remnants of 
those which built up the bone, the hard parts of the latter 
being really an intercellular substance or skeleton formed 
around and by these cells, much in the same way as a calca¬ 
reous skeleton is formed around a Foraminifer by the activity 
of its protoplasm. By the co-operation of all the bone- 
corpuscles, and the union of their skeletons, the whole bone 
is built up. 

In other bones we find the same general arrangement of 
the parts, an outer dense layer and an inner spongy portion. 
In the flat and irregular bones there is no medullary cavity, 
and the whole centre is filled up with cancellated tissue with 
red marrow in its spaces. For example, in the thin bones 
roofing in the skull we find an outer and an inner hard layer of 
compact bone known as the outer and inner table respectively, 
the inner especially being very dense. Between the two tables 
lies the spongy bone, red in color to the naked eye from the 
marrow within it, and called the diploe. The interior of the 
vertebrae also is entirely occupied by spongy bone. Every¬ 
where, except where a bone joins some other part of the skel¬ 
eton. it is covered by the periosteum. 

Chemical Composition of Bone. Apart from the bone- 
corpuscles and the soft contents of the Haversian canals and 



90 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


of the spaces of the cancellated bone, the bony substance 
proper, as found in the lamellae, is composed of earthy and 
organic portions intimately combined, so that the smallest 
distinguishable portion of bone contains both. The earthy 
matters form about two thirds of the total weight of a dried 
bone, and may be removed by soaking the bone in dilute 
hydrochloric acid. The organic portion left after this treat¬ 
ment constitutes a flexible mass, retaining the form of the 
original bone; it consists chiefly of an albuminoid, ossein , 
which by long boiling, especially under pressure at a higher 
temperature than that at which water boils when exposed 
freely to the air, is converted into gelatin , which dissolves 
in the hot water. Much of the gelatin of commerce is pre¬ 
pared in this manner by boiling the bones of slaughtered 
animals, and even well-picked bones may be used to form a 
good thick soup if boiled under pressure in a Papin’s digester; 
much nutritious matter being, in the common modes of do¬ 
mestic cooking, thrown away in the bones. 

The earthy salts of bone may be obtained free from organic 
matter by calcining a bone in a clear fire, which burns away 
the organic matter. The residue forms a white very brittle 
mass, retaining perfectly the shape and structural details of 
the original bone. It consists mainly of normal calcium 
phosphate, or bone-earth (Ca 3 ,2P0 4 ); but there is also pres¬ 
ent a considerable proportion of calcium carbonate (CaC0 3 ) 
and smaller quantities of other salts. 

Hygiene of the Bony Skeleton. In early life the bones 
are less rigid, from the fact that the earthy matters then pres¬ 
ent in them bear a less proportion to the softer organic parts. 
Hence the bones of an aged person are more brittle and easily 
broken than those of a child. The bones of a young child 
are in fact tolerably flexible and may be distorted by any con¬ 
tinued strain; therefore children should never be kept sitting 
for hours, in school or elsewhere, on a bench which is so high 
that the feet are not supported. If this be insisted upon (for 
no child will continue it voluntarily) the thigh-bones will al¬ 
most certainly be bent over the edge of the seat by the weight 
of the legs and feet, and a permanent distortion may be pro¬ 
duced. For the same reason it is important that a child 
be made to sit straight while writing, to avoid the risk of 
producing a lateral curvature of the spinal column. The 
facility with which the bones may be moulded by prolonged 


STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF BONE. JOINTS. 91 


pressure in early life is well seen in the distortion of the 
feet of Chinese ladies, produced by keeping them in tight 
shoes; and in the extraordinary forms which some races of 
man produce in their skulls, by tying boards on the heads of 
the children. 

Throughout the whole of life, moreover, the bones remain 
among the most easily modified parts of the Body ; although 
judging from the fact that dead bones are the most permanent 
parts of fossil animals we might be inclined to think other¬ 
wise. The living bone, however, is constantly undergoing, 
changes under the influence of the protoplasmic cells im¬ 
bedded in it, and in the living Body is constantly being ab¬ 
sorbed and reconstructed. The experience of physicians 
shows that any continued pressure, such as that of a tumor, 
will cause the absorption and disappearance of bone almost 
quicker than that of any other tissue; and the same is 
true of any other continued pressure. Moreover, during life 
the bones are eminently plastic; under abnormal pressures 
they are found to quickly assume abnormal shapes, being 
absorbed and disappearing at points where the pressure 
is most powerful, and increasing at other points; tight! 
lacing may in this way produce a permanent distortion of 
the ribs. 

When a bone is fractured a surgeon should be called in 
as soon as possible, for once inflammation has set in and 
the parts have become swollen it is much more difficult to 
place the broken ends of the bone together in their proper 
position than before this has occurred. Once the bones are 
replaced they must be held in position by splints or bandages, 
or the muscles attached to them will soon displace them 
again. With rest, in young and healthy persons complete 
union will commonly occur in three or four weeks; but in 
old persons the process of healing is slower and is apt to be 
imperfect. 

Articulations. The bones of the skeleton are joined 
together in very various ways; sometimes so as to admit 
of no movement at all between them; in other cases so as 
to permit only a limited range or variety of movement; and 
elsewhere so as to allow of very free movement in many 
directions. All kinds of unions between bones are called ar¬ 
ticulations. 

Of articulations permitting no movements, those which 


92 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


unite the majority of the cranial bones afford a good example. 
Except the lower jaw, and certain tiny bones inside the tem¬ 
poral bone belonging to the organ of hearing, all the skull- 
bones are immovably joined together. This union in most 
cases occurs by means of toothed edges which fit into one 
another and form jagged lines of union known as sutures . 
Some of these can be well seen in Fig. 29 between the 
frontal and parietal bones ( coronal suture) and between the 
parietal and occipital bones ( lambdoidal suture ); while an¬ 
other lies along the middle line in the top of the crown 
between the two parietal bones, and is known as the sagittal 
suture. In new-born children where the sagittal meets the 
coronal and lambdoidal sutures there are large spaces not yet 
covered in by the neighboring bones, which subsequently 
extend over them. These openings are known as fontanelles. 
At them a pulsation can often be felt synchronous with each 
beat of the heart, which, driving more blood into the brain, 
distends it and causes it to push out the skin where bone is 
absent. Another good example of an articulation admitting 
of no movement is that between the rough surfaces on the 
sides of the sacrum and the innominate bones. 

We find good examples of the second class of articulations 
'—those admitting of a slight amount of movement—in the 
vertebral column. Between every pair of vertebras from the 
second cervical to the sacrum is an elastic pad, the interver¬ 
tebral dish , which adheres by its surfaces to the bodies of the 
vertebras between which it lies, and only permits so much 
movement between them as can be brought about by its own 
compression or stretching. When the back-bone is curved to 
the right, for instance, each of the intervertebral disks is 
compressed on its right side and stretched a little on its left, 
and this combination of movements, each individually but 
slight, gives considerable flexibility to the spinal column as a 
whole. 

Joints. Articulations permitting of movement by the glid¬ 
ing of one bone over another are known as joints , and all 
have the same fundamental structure, although the amount 
of movement permitted in different joints is very different. 

Hip-joint. We may take this as a good example of a true 
joint permitting a great amount and variety of moyement. 
On the os innominatum is the cavity of the acetabulum (Fig. 
43), which is lined inside by a thin layer of articular carti - 


STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF BONE. JOINTS. 93 


lage which has an extremely smooth surface. The bony cup 
is also deepened a little by a cartilaginous rim. The proximal 
end of the femur consists of a nearly spherical smooth head , 
borne on a somewhat narrower neck , and fitting into the ace¬ 
tabulum. This head also is covered with articular cartilage; 
and it rolls in the acetabulum like a ball in a socket. To 
keep the bones together and limit the amount of movement, 
ligaments pass from one to the other. These are composed 
of white fibrous connective tissue (Chap. VIII) and are ex¬ 
tremely pliable, but quite inextensible and. very strong and 



Fig. 43—Section through the hip-joint. 


tough. One is the capsular ligament , which forms a sort of 
loose bag all round the joint, and another is the round liga¬ 
ment, , which passes from the acetabulum to the head of the 
femur. Should the latter rotate above a certain extent in 
its socket, the round ligament and one side of the capsular 
ligament are put on the stretch, arid any further movement 
which might dislocate the femur (that is, remove the head 
from its socket) is checked. Covering the inside of the cap¬ 
sular ligament and the outside of the round ligament is a 
layer of flat cells, which are continued in a modified form 
over the articular cartilages and form the synovial membrane. 
This, which thus forms the lining of the joint, is always 



94 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


moistened in health by a small quantity of glairy synovial 
fluid, something like the white of a raw egg in consistency, 
and playing the part of the oil with which the contiguous 
moving surfaces of a machine are moistened; it makes all 
run smoothly with very little friction. 

In the natural state of the parts, the head of the femur and 
the bottom and sides of the acetabulum lie in close contact, 
the two synovial membranes rubbing together. This contact 
is not maintained by the ligaments, which are too loose and 
serve only to check excessive movement, but by the numerous 
stout muscles which pass from the thigh to the trunk and 
bind the two firmly together. Moreover, the atmospheric 
pressure exerted on the surface of the Body and transmitted 
through the soft parts to the outside of the air-tight joint 
helps also to keep the parts in contact. If all the muscles 
and ligaments around the joint be cut away, it is still found in 
the dead Body that the head of the femur will be kept in its 
socket b}' this pressure, and so firmly as to bear the weight of 
the whole limb without dislocation, just as the pressure of 
the air will enable a boy’s “ sucker ” to lift a tolerably heavy 
stone. 

Ball-and-socket Joints. Such a joint as that at the hip is 
called a ball-and-socket joint and allows of more free move¬ 
ment than any other. Through movements occurring in it 
the thigh can be flexed, or bent so that the knee approaches 
the chest; or extended, that is, moved in the opposite direc¬ 
tion. It can be abducted, so that the knee moves outwards; 
and adducted, or moved back towards the other knee again. 
The limb can also by movements at the hip-joint be circum¬ 
ducted, that is, made to describe a cone of which the base is 
at the foot and the apex at the hip. Finally, rotation can 
occur in the joint, so that with knee and foot joints held 
rigid the toes can be turned in of out, to a certain extent, by 
a rolling around of the femur in its socket. 

At the junction of the humerus with the scapula is another 
ball-and-socket joint permitting all the above movements to 
even a greater extent. This greater range of motion at the 
shoulder-joint depends mainly on the shallowness of the 
glenoid cavity as compared with the acetabulum, and upon 
the absence of any ligament answering to the round ligament 
of the hip-joint. Another ball-and-socket joint exists between 
the carpus and the metacarpal bone of the thumb; and others 


STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF BONE . JOINTS. 95 


with the same variety, but a much less range, of movement 
between each of the remaining metacarpal bones and the 
proximal phalanx of the finger which articulates with it. 

Hinge-joints. Another form of synovial joint is known as 
a hinge-joint. In it the articulating bony surfaces are of 
such shape as to permit of movement, to and fro, in one plane 
only, like a door on its hinges. The joints between the pha¬ 
langes of the fingers are good examples of hinge-joints. If 
no movement be allowed where the finger joins the palm of 
the hand it will be found that each can be bent and straight¬ 
ened at its own two joints, but not moved in any other way. 
The knee is also a hinge-joint, as is the articulation between 
the lower jaw and the base of the skull which allows us to 
open and close our mouths. The latter is, however, not a 
perfect hinge-joint, since it permits of a small amount of 
lateral movement such as occurs in chewing, and also of a 
gliding movement by which the lower jaw can be thrust for¬ 
ward so as to protrude the chin and bring the lower row of 
teeth outside the upper. 

Pivot-joints. In this form one bone rotates around 
another which remains stationary. We have a good example 
of it between the first and second cervical vertebrae. The 
first cervical vertebra or atlas (Fig. 22) has a very small 
body and a very large arch, and its neural canal is subdivided 
by a transverse ligament (A, Fig. 22) into a dorsal and a ven¬ 
tral portion; in the former the spinal cord lies. The second 
vertebra or axis (Fig. 23) has arising from its body the stout 
bony peg, Z), called the odontoid process. This projects into 
the ventral portion of the space surrounded by the atlas, and, 
kept in place there by the transverse ligament, forms a pivot 
around which the atlas, carrying the skull with it, rotates 
when we turn the head from side to side. The joints on each 
side between the atlas and the skull are hinge-joints and per¬ 
mit only the movements of nodding and raising the head. 
When the head is leaned over to one side, the cervical part of 
the spinal column is bent. 

Another kind of pivot-joint is seen in the forearm. If 
the limb be held straight out, with the palm up and the elbow 
resting on the table, so that the shoulder-joint be kept steady 
while the hand is rotated until its back is turned upwards, it 
will be found that the radius has partly rolled round the ulna. 
When the palm is upwards and the thumb outwards, the 


THE HUMAN BODY. 




lower end of the radius can be felt on the outer side of the 
forearm just above the wrist, and if this be done while the hand 
is turning over, it will be easily discerned that during the 
movement this end of the radius, carrying the hand with it, 
travels around the lower end of the ulna so as to get to its 
inner side. The relative position of the bones when the palm 
is upwards is shown at A in Fig. 44, and when the palm is 

down at B. The former position 
is known as supination ; the latter 
as jt nonation. The elbow end of 
the humerus (Fig. 39) bears a 
large articular surface: on the 
inner two thirds of this, Tr , the 
ulna fits, and the ridges and 
grooves of both bones interlock¬ 
ing form a hinge-joint, allowing 
only of bending or straightening 
the forearm on the arm. The 
radius fits on the rounded outer 
third, Cpl , and forms there a ball- 
and-socket joint at which the 
movement takes place when dhe 
hand is turned from the supine 
to the prone position; the ulna 
forming a fixed bar around which 
the lower end of the radius is 
moved. 

Gliding Joints. These per¬ 
mit as a rule but little movement: 
examples are found between the closely packed bones of the 
tarsus (Fig. 38) and carpus, which slide a little over one 
another when subjected to pressure. 

Hygiene of the Joints. When a bone is displaced or 
dislocated the ligaments around the joint are more or less 
torn and other soft parts injured. This soon leads to inflam¬ 
mation and swelling which make not only the recognition of 
the injury but, after diagnosis, the replacement of the bone, 
or the reduction of the dislocation , difficult. Moreover the 
muscles attached to it constantly pull on the displaced bone 
and drag it still farther out of place; so that it is of great 
importance that a dislocation be reduced as soon as possible. 
In most cases this can only be attempted with safety by one 



Fig. 44.—A, arm in supination; B, 
arm in pronation. H, humerus; E , 
radius; U, ulna. 








STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF BONE. JOINTS. 97 


who knows the form of the hones, and possesses sufficient ana¬ 
tomical knowledge to recognize the direction of the displace¬ 
ment. No injury to a joint should be neglected. Inflamma¬ 
tion once started there is often difficult to check and runs on, 
in a chronic way, until the synovial surfaces are destroyed, 
and the two bones perhaps grow together, rendering the joint 
permanently stiff. A sprained joint should get immediate 
and complete rest, for weeks if necessary, and if there be 
much swelling, or continued pain, medical advice should be 
obtained. /An improperly cared-for sprain is the cause of many 
a useless ankle or knet^ 


CHAPTER VIII. 


CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 

Temporary and Permanent Cartilages. In early life a 
great many parts of the supporting framework of the Body, 
which afterwards become bone, consist of cartilage. Such for 
example is the case with all the vertebrae, and with the bones 
of the limbs. In these cartilages subsequently the process 
known as ossification takes place, by which a great portion of 
the original cartilaginous model is removed and replaced by 
true osseous tissue. Often, however, some of the primitive 
cartilage is left throughout the whole of life at the ends of 
the bones in joints where it forms the articular cartilages; 
and in various other places still larger masses remain, such as 
the costal cartilages, those in the external ears forming their 
framework, others finishing the skeleton of the nose which is 
only incompletely bony, and many in internal parts of the 
Body, as the cartilage of “ Adam’s apple,” which can be felt 
in the front of the neck, and a number of rings around the 
windpipe serving to keep it open. These persistent masses 
are known as the permanent, the others as the temporary 
cartilages. In old age many so-called permanent cartilages 
become calcified— that is, hardened and made unyielding by 
deposits of lime-salts in them—without assuming the histo¬ 
logical character of bone, and this calcification of the perma¬ 
nent cartilages is one chief cause of the want of pliability and 
suppleness of the frame in advanced life. 

Hyaline Cartilage. In its purest form cartilage is flexi¬ 
ble and elastic, of a pale bluish-white color when alive and 
seen in large masses, and cuts readily with a knife. In thin 
pieces it is quite transparent. Everywhere except in the 
joints it is invested by a tough adherent membrane, the peri¬ 
chondrium, which resembles in structure and function the 
periosteum of the bones. When boiled for a long time in 
water, such cartilages yield a solution of chondrin, which 
differs from gelatin in minor points, but agrees with it in the 
fact that its solution in hot water “ sets ” or gelatinizes on cool- 


CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 


99 


ing. When a thin slice of hyaline cartilage is examined with 
a microscope it is found (Fig. 45) to consist of granular nucle¬ 
ated cells, often collected into groups of two, four, or more, 
scattered through a homogeneous or faintly granular ground- 
substance or matrix. Essentially, cartilage resembles bone, 
being made up of protoplasmic cells and a proportionately 
large amount of non-protop]asmic intercellular substance, the 



Fig. 45.—A thin slice of cartilage, magnified, to show the cells imbedded in the 
homogeneous matrix, a, a cell in which the nucleus has divided; b, a cell in which 
division is Just complete; c, e, a group of four cells resulting from further division 
of a pair like b; the new cells have formed some matrix between them, separating 
them from another; d, d. cavities in the matrix from which celk have dropped out 
during the preparation of the specimen. 

cells being the more actively living part and the matrix their 
product. Examples of this hyaline variety (so called from 
its glassy transparent appearance) are found in all the tempo¬ 
rary cartilages, and in the costal and articular among the 
permanent. 

C&rtilages rarely contain blood-vessels except at points 
where a temporary cartilage is being removed and replaced 
by bone; then blood-vessels run in from the perichondrium 
and form loops in the matrix, around which it is absorbed 
and bony tissue deposited. In consequence of the usual 
absence of blood-vessels the nutritive processes and exchanges 
of material must be small and slow in cartilage, as might in¬ 
deed be expected from the passive and merely mechanical 
role which this tissue plays. 

Hyaline cartilage is the type, or most characteristically 
developed form, of a tissue found with modifications else¬ 
where in the Body. One of its other modifications is the so- 
called cellular cartilage , which consists of the cells with 
hardly any matrix, only just enough to form a thin capsule 
around each. This form is that with which all the carti- 


L 





100 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


lages commence, the hyaline variety being built up by the in¬ 
crease of the cell-capsules and their fusion to form the ma¬ 
trix. It persists throughout life in the thin cartilaginous 
plate of a mouse’s external ear. Other varieties of cartilage 
are really mixtures of true cartilage and connective tissues, 
and will be considered after the latter. 

The Connective Tissues. These complete the skeleton, 
marked out in its coarser features by the bones and cartilages, 
and constitute the final group of the supporting tissues. 
They occur in all forms, from broad membranes and stout 
cords to the finest threads forming networks around the other 
ultimate histological elements of various organs. In addition 
to subsidiary forms, three main varieties of this tissue are 
readily distinguishable, viz., areolar, white fibrous, and yelloiu 
elastic. Each consists of fibres and cells, the fibres being of 
two kinds, mixed in nearly equal proportions in the areolar 
variety, while one kind predominates in one and another in 
the second of the remaining chief forms. 

Areolar Connective Tissue. This exists abundantly be¬ 
neath the skin, where it forms a loose layer which permits 
the skin to be moved, more or less, to and fro over the sub¬ 
jacent parts. Areolar tissue consists of innumerable bands 
and cords interlacing in all directions, and can be greatly dis¬ 
tended by blowing air in at any point, from whence it travels 
widely through the intercommunicating meshes: if dried 
while distended it is somewhat like raw cotton in appearance 
but not so white. In dropsy of the legs or feet the cavities 
of this tissue are distended with lymph, which in health is 
present only in sufficient quantity to moisten them. From 
beneath the skin the areolar tissue extends all through the 
Body between the muscles and around the blood-vessels and 
nerves; and still finer layers of it enter into these and other 
organs and unite their various parts together. It constitutes 
in fact a soft packing material which fills up the holes and 
corners of the Body, as for instance around the blood-vessels 
and between the muscles in Fig. 4. 

Microscopic Structure of Areolar Tissue. When exam¬ 
ined with the microscope areolar tissue is seen to consist of 
nucleated cells imbedded in a ground-snbstance which is per¬ 
meated by fibres. The fibres everywhere form the predomi¬ 
nant feature of the tissue (the homogeneous matrix and the 
cells being inconspicuous) and are of two very different kinds. 


CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 101 

In a strict sense indeed the areolar tissue ought to be consid¬ 
ered as a mixture of two tissues, one corresponding to each 
variety of fibres in it. It is characterized by its loose texture 
and by the fact that the two forms of fibres are present in 
about equal quantities. In many places a tissue containing 
the same histological elements as the areolar tissue is found 
in the form of dense membranes, as for example periosteum 
and perichondrium. 

White Fibrous Tissue. One of the varieties of fibres per¬ 
vading the matrix of areolar tissue exists almost unmixed 
with the other kind in the cords or tendons which unite mus- 



puscles, seen edgewise and appearing spindle-snaped, are seen here and there on 
the surface of the bundles of fibres. 

Fig. 46a.—Yellow elastic tissue, magnified after its fibres have been torn apart. 

cles to the bones. This form, known as the 'white fibrous con¬ 
nective tissue , is also found fairly pure in the ligaments around 
most joints. Physically it is very flexible but extremely 
tough and inextensible, so that it will readily bend in any 
direction but is very hard to break; when fresh it has an 
opaque white color. 

White fibrous tissue (Fig. 46) consists of a matrix, contain¬ 
ing cavities in which cells lie, and pervaded by bundles of 
extremely fine fibres. These fibres run in each bundle toler- 









102 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ably parallel to one another in a wavy course (Fig. 46) and 
never branch or unite. Their diameter varies from 0.0005 to 
0.001 millimeter (-^oiwo to an inch). 

Chemically this tissue is characterized by the fact that its 
fibres swell up and become indistinguishable when treated 
with dilute acetic acid, and by the fact that it yields gelatin 
when boiled in water. The substance in it, called ossein in 
bones, which is turned into gelatin by such treatment, is here 
known as collagen. Glue is impure gelatin obtained from 
tendons and ligaments, and calfs-foot jelly, so often recom¬ 
mended to invalids, is a purer form of the same substance 
obtained by boiling the feet of calves, which contain the ten¬ 
dons of many muscles passing from the leg to the foot. 

Elastic Tissue. This is almost invariably mixed in some 
proportion in all specimens of white fibrous tissue, even the 
purest, such as the tendons of muscles; but in certain places 
it exists almost alone, as for example in the ligaments ( liga - 
menta subflava) between the arches of the vertebrae, and in 
the coats of the larger arteries. In quadrupeds it forms the 
great ligament already referred to (p. 83), which helps to sus¬ 
tain the head. This tissue, in mass, is of a dull yellow color 
and extremely extensible and elastic; when purest nearly as 
much so as a piece of india-rubber. Sometimes it appears 
under the microscope to be made up of delicate membranes, 
but more often it is in the form of fibres (Fig. 46«) which are 
coarser than those of white fibrous tissue and frequently 
branch and unite. It is unaffected by acetic acid and does 
not yield gelatin when boiled in water. 

Connective-tissue Corpuscles. The fibres of white fi¬ 
brous tissue, wherever it is found, are united into bundles by 
a structureless ground-material known as the cement-sub¬ 
stance , which also invests each bundle, or skein as we may 
call it, with a delicate coating. In this ground-substance are 
numerous cavities, branched and flattened in one diameter, 
and often intercommunicating by their branches. In these 
cavities lie nucleated masses of protoplasm (Fig. 47), fre¬ 
quently also branched, known as the connective-tissue cor¬ 
puscles. These it is which build up the tissue, each 
cell in the course of development forming around it a 
quantity of intercellular substance, which subsequently be¬ 
comes fibrillated in great part, the remainder forming the 
cement. The cells do not quite fill the cavities in which they 



CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 


103 


lie, and these opening into others by their offsets there is 
formed a set of minute tubes ramifying through the con¬ 
nective tissues; and (since these in turn permeate nearly all 
the Body) pervading all the organs. In these cell-cavities 
and their branches the lymph flows before it enters definite 
lymphatic vessels, and they are accordingly known as lymph 



Fig. 4i. Connective-tissue corpuscles : a, from areolar tissue ; b, from tendon ; 
c, wandering cells. 

canaliculi. In addition to the fixed branched connective- 
tissue corpuscles there are often found other cells, when living 
connective tissue is examined. These cells much resemble 
white blood-corpuscles, and probably are such which have 
bored through the walls of the finer blood-vessels. They 
creep about along the canaliculi by means of their faculty 
of amoeboid movement, and are known as the “ wandering 
cells.” 

Subsidiary Varieties of Connective Tissue —In various 
parts of the Body are connective-tissue structures which have 
not undergone the typical development, but have departed 
from it in one way or another. The cells having formed a 
non-fibrillated intercellular substance around them, develop¬ 
ment may go no farther and the mass remain permanently as 
the jellylike connective tissue ; or, as in the vitreous humor 
of the eye (Chap. XXXI), the cells having formed the soft 
matrix, may disappear and leave the latter only. In other 
cases the intercellular substance disappears and the cells 
branching, and joining by the ends of their branches, form a 
network themselves, nucleated or not at the points answering 
to the centre of each originally separate cell. This is known 
as adenoid connective tissue. In other cases the cells almost 
alone constitute the tissue, becoming flattened, closely fitted 
at their edges, and united by a very small amount of cement- 
substance. Membranes formed in this way lie beneath 
epithelium in many places and are known as basement - 



104 


THE HUMAN BODY,. 


membranes: the flat cells (Fig. 11, b) which form the 
epithelium of the serous cavities are themselves a layer of 
modified connective-tissue corpuscles. 

In brain and spinal cord, protecting and supporting the 
nerve-tissues, are found branched cells forming the neuroglia. 
They are not true connective tissue, but correspond to cells 
of the horny layer of the epidermis, shut in when the 
medullary canal was closed in the embryo. 

Elastic Cartilage and Eibro-cartilage. We may now 
return to cartilages and consider those forms which are made 
up of more or less true cartilage mixed with less or more con¬ 
nective tissue of one kind or another. The cartilages of the 
ear and nose and some others have their matrix pervaded by 
fine branching fibres of yellow elastic tissue, which form net¬ 
works around the groups of cartilage-cells. Such cartilages 
are pliable and tough and possess also considerable extensibil¬ 
ity and elasticity. They are known as elastic or, from their 
color, as yelloiv cartilages. Elsewhere, especially in the carti¬ 
lages which lie between the bones in some joints, we find 
forms which have the matrix pervaded by white fibrous tissue 
and known as fibro-cartilages. For example the articular 
cartilage on the end of the lower jaw does not come into 



Fig. 48 .— Section through the joint of the lower jaw showing its interarticular 
fibro-cartilage, x, with the synovial cavity on each side of it. 

direct contact with that covering its socket on the skull, but 
lying between the two in the joint (Fig. 48) is an interartic¬ 
ular fibro-cartilage : similar cartilages exist in the knee-joint; 




CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 


105 


and the intervertebral disks are also made up of this tissue. 
Both elastic cartilage and fibro-cartilage often shade off 
insensibly into pure elastic or pure white fibrous connective 
tissue. 

Homologies of the Supporting Tissues. Bone, cartilage, 
and connective tissue all agree in broad structural characters, 
and in the uses to which they are applied in the Body. In 
each of them the cells which have built up the tissue, with 
few exceptions, form an inconspicuous part of it in its fully 
developed state, the chief mass of it consisting of intercellular 
substance. In hyaline cartilages this latter is not fibrillated; 
but these cartilages pass insensibly in various regions of the 
Body into elastic or fibro-cartilages, and these latter in 
turn into elastic or fibrous connective tissue. The lamellae 
of bone, too, when peeled off a bone softened in acid and 
examined with a very high magnifying power, are seen to be 
pervaded by fine fibres. Structurally, therefore, one can 
draw no hard and fast line between these tissues. The same 
is true of their chemical composition; bone and white fibrous 
tissue contain a substance (collagen) which is converted into 
gelatin when boiled in water; and in old people many carti¬ 
lages become hardened by the deposit in their matrix of the 
same lime-salts which give its hardness to bone. Further, 
the developmental history of all of them is much alike. In 
very early life each is represented by cells only: these form 
an intercellular substance, and this subsequently may become 
fibrillated, or calcified, or both. Finally they all agree in 
manifesting in health no great physiological activity, their 
use in the Body depending upon the mechanical properties 
of their intercellular portions. 

The close alliance of all three is further shown by the 
frequency with which they replace one another. All the 
bones and cartilages of the adult are at first represented only 
by collections of connective tissue. Before or after birth this 
is in some cases substituted by bone directly (as in the case of 
the collar-bone and the bones on the roof of the skull), while 
in other cases cartilage supplants the connective tissue, to be 
afterwards in many places replaced by bone, while elsewhere 
it remains throughout life. 

Moreover in different adult animals we often find the 
same part bony in one, cartilaginous in a second, and com¬ 
posed of connective tissue in a third: so that these tissues 


106 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


not only represent one another at different stages in the life 
of the same animal but permanently throughout the whole 
life of different animals. Low in the animal scale we find 
them all represented merely by cells with structureless inter¬ 
cellular substance: a little higher in the scale the latter 
becomes fibrillated and forms distinct connective tissue. 
In the highest Mollusks (as the cuttle-fishes) this is 
partly replaced by cartilage, and the same is true of the low¬ 
est fishes; while in some other fishes and the remaining 
Vertebrates we find more or less bone appearing in place of 
the original connective tissue or cartilage. 

From the similarity of their modes of development and 
fundamental structure, the transitional forms which exist 
between them, and the frequency with which they replace 
one another, histologists class the three (bone, cartilage, and 
connective tissue) together as homologous tissues and regard 
them as differentiations of the same original structure. 

Hygienic Remarks. Since in the new-born infant many 
parts which will ultimately become bone consist only of car¬ 
tilage, the you-ng child requires food which shall contain a 
large proportion of the lime-salts which are used in building 
up bone. Nature provides this in the milk, which is rich in 
such salts (see Chap. XXI), and no other food can thoroughly 
replace it. Long after infancy milk should form a large 
part of a child’s diet. Many children though given food 
abundant in quantity are really starved, since their food does 
not contain in sufficient amount the mineral salts requisite 
for their healthy development. 

At birth even those bones of a child which are most ossi¬ 
fied are often not continuous masses of osseous tissue. In the 
humerus, for example, the shaft of the bone is well ossified 
and so is each end, but between the shafts and each of the 
articular extremities there still remains a cartilaginous layer, 
and at those points the bone increases in length, new cartilage 
being formed and replaced by bone. The bone increases in 
thickness by new osseous tissue formed beneath the perios¬ 
teum. The same thing is true of the bones of the leg. On 
account of the largely cartilaginous and imperfectly knit 
state of its bones, it is cruel to encourage a young child to 
walk beyond its strength, and may lead to “ bow-legs’’ or 
other permanent distortions. Nevertheless here as elsewhere 
in the animal body, moderate exercise promotes the growth of 


CARTILAGE AND CONNECTIVE TISSUE. 


107 


the tissues concerned, and it is nearly as bad to wheel a child 
about forever in a baby-carriage as to force it to over exertion. 

(The best rule is to let a healthy child use its limbs when 
it feels inclined, but not by praise or blame to incite it to 
efforts which are beyond its age, and so sacrifice its healthy 
growth to the vanity of parent or nurse. 

The final knitting together of the bony articular ends 
with the shaft of many bones takes place only comparatively 
late in life, and the age at which it occurs varies much in 
different bones. Generally speaking, a layer of cartilage re¬ 
mains between the shaft and the ends of the bone, until the 
latter has attained its full adult length. To take a few 
examples : the lower articular extremity of the humerus 
only becomes continuous with the shaft by bony tissue in the 
sixteenth or seventeenth year of life. The upper articular 
extremity only joins the shaft by bony continuity in the 
twentieth year. The upper eud of the femur joins the shaft 
by bone from the seventeenth to the nineteenth year, and 
the low T er end during the twentieth. In the tibia the upper 
extremity and the shaft unite in the twenty-first year, and 
the lower end and the shaft in the eighteenth or nineteenth : 
while in the fibula the upper end joins the shaft in the 
twenty-fourth year, and the lower end in the twenty-first. 
The separate vertebrae of the sacrum are only united to form 
one bone in the twenty-fifth year of life; and the ilium, 
ischium, and pubis unite to form the os innominatum about 
the same period. UJp to about twenty-five then the skeleton 
is not firmly “knit,” and is incapable, without risk of injury, 
of bearing strains which it might afterwards meet with im¬ 
punity. ^To let lads of sixteen or seventeen row and take 
other exercise in plenty is one thing, and a good one; but to 
allow them to undergo the severe and prolonged strain of 
training for and rowing a long race is quite another, and not 
devoid of risk. 

Adipose Tissue. Fatty substances of several kinds exist 
in considerable quantity in the Human Body in health, some 
as minute droplets floating in the bodily liquids or imbedded 
in various cells, but most in special cells, nearly filled with 
fat, and collected into masses with supporting and nutritive 
parts to form adipose tissue. In fact almost in every spot 
where the widely distributed areolar tissue is found, there is 
adipose tissue in greater or less proportion mixed with it. 


108 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Considerable quantities exist for example in the subcuta¬ 
neous areolar tissue, especially in the female sex, giving the 
figure of the woman its general more graceful roundness of 
contour when compared with that of the male. Large quanti¬ 
ties commonly lie in the abdominal cavity around the kid¬ 
neys; in the eye-sockets, forming a 
pad for the eyeballs; in the mar¬ 
row of bones; around the joints, 
and so on. 

Examined with the microscope 
(Fig. 49) adipose tissue is found to 
consist of small vesicles from 0.2 
mm. to 0.09 mm. (-^ to inch) 
in diameter, clustered together into 
little masses and bound to one an- 

in^areoiar - tts^ueT^a/^ucieus; other by connective tissue and blood- 
6, protoplasm ; c, oii-dropiet. vesgelg which i nte rtwine around 

them; in this way the little angular masses which are seen in 
beef-suet are formed, each mass being separated by a some¬ 
what coarser partition of areolar tissue from its neighbors. 
The individual fat-cells are spherical or ovoid except when 
closely packed; then they become polygonal. Each consists 
of a delicate envelope containing oily matter, which in life 
is liquid at the temperature of the Body. Besides the oily 
matter, a nucleus is commonly present in each fat-cell; and 
a thin layer of protoplasm, exaggerated in Fig. 49, forms a 
lining to the cell-wall. The oily matter consists of a mixture 
of palmatin, olein and stearin, which are compounds of pal¬ 
mitic, stearic and oleic acids with glycerin, three molecules 
of the acid being combined with one of glycerin, with the 
elimination of water; as for example: 



3(°.A.O } 0 ) + C,H f 0 _ 

Stearic acid. Glycerin. 


3(C ls H a6 0)) 0 , 

c,hJ°* + 

Stearin. 


3H 2 0 

Water. 



CHAPTER IX. 


THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. 

Motion in Animals and Plants. If one were asked to 
point out the most distinctive property of living animals, the 
answer would probably be, their power of executing spontane¬ 
ous movements. Animals as wc commonly know them are 
rarely at rest, while trees and stones move only when acted 
upon by external forces, which are in most cases readily re¬ 
cognizable. Even at their quietest times some kind of motion 
is observable in the higher animals. In our own Bodies 
during the deepest sleep the breathing movements and the 
beat of the heart continue; their cessation is to an onlooker 
the most obvious sign of death. Here, however, as elsewhere 
in Biology, we find that precise boundaries do not exist; at 
any rate so far as animals and plants are concerned we cannot 
draw a hard and fast line between them with reference to the 
presence or absence of apparently spontaneous motility. Many 
a flower closes in the evening to expand again in the morning 
sun; and in many plants comparatively rapid and extensive 
movements can be called forth by a slight touch, which in 
itself is quite insufficient to produce mechanically that amount 
of motion in the mass. The Venus’s flytrap (Dioncea musci- 
pula) for example has fine hairs on its leaves, and when these 
are touched by an insect the leaf closes up so as to imprison 
the animal, which is subsequently digested and absorbed by 
the leaf. The higher plants it is true have not the power of 
locomotion, they cannot change their place as the higher ani¬ 
mals can; but on the other hand some of the lower animals 
are permanently fixed to one spot; and among the lowest 
plants many are known which swim about actively through 
the water in which they live. The lowest animals and plants 
are in fact those which have undergone least differentiation 
in their development, and which therefore resemble each 
other in possessing, in a more or less manifest degree, all the 
fundamental physiological properties of that simple mass of 


110 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


protoplasm which formed the starting-point of each individ¬ 
ual. With the physiological division of labor which takes 
place in the higher forms we find that, speaking broadly, 
plants especially develop nutritive tissues, while animals are 
characterized by the high development of tissues with motor 
and irritable properties; so that the preponderance of these 
latter is very marked when a complex animal, like a dog or a 
man, is compared with a complex plant, like a pine or a hick¬ 
ory. The higher animal possesses in addition to greatly de¬ 
veloped nutritive tissues (which differ only in detail from 
those of the plant, and constitute what are therefore often 
called organs of vegetative life) well-developed spontaneous, 
irritable and contractile tissues, found mainly in the nervous 
and muscular systems, and forming what have been called the 
organs of animal life. Since these place the animal in close 
relationship with the surrounding universe, enabling slight 
external forces to excite it, and it in turn to act upon external 
objects, they are also often spoken of as organs of relation. 
In man they have a higher development on the whole than in 
any other animal, and give him his leading place in the ani¬ 
mate world, and his power of so largely controlling and direct- 
ing natural forces for his own good, while the plant can only 
passively strive to endure and make the best of what happens 
to it; it has little or no influence in controlling the happening. 

Amoeboid Cells. The simplest motor tissues in the adult 
Human Body are the amoeboid cells (Fig. 15) already de¬ 
scribed, which may be regarded as the slightly modified 
descendants of the undifferentiated cells which at one time 
made up the whole Body. In the adult they are not attached 
to other parts, so that their changes of form only affect them¬ 
selves and produce no movements in the rest of the Body. 
Hence with regard to the whole frame they can hardly be 
called motor tissues, and are classed in the group of undiffer¬ 
entiated tissues. 

Ciliated Cells. As the growing Body develops from its 
primitive simplicity we find that the cells lining some of the 
tubes and cavities in its interior undergo a very remark¬ 
able change, by which each cell differentiates itself into a nu¬ 
tritive and a highly motile and spontaneous portion. Such 
cells are found for example lining the windpipe, and are 
represented in Fig. 50. Each has a conical form, the base of 
the cone being turned to the cavity of the air-tube, and con- 


THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. Ill 



Fig. 50.—Ciliated cells. 


tains an oval nucleus witli a nucleolus. On the broader free 
end are a number (about thirty on the average) of extremely 
fine processes called cilia. (During life 
these are in constant rapid movement, 
lashing to and fro in the liquid which 
moistens the interior of the passage; and 
as the cells are very closely packed, a bit 
of the inner surface of the windpipe, ex¬ 
amined with a microscope, looks like a 
field of wheat or barley when the wind 
blows over it. Each cilium strikes with 
more force in one direction than in the opposite, and as this 
direction of more powerful stroke is the same for all the cilia 
on any one surface, the resultant effect is that the liquid in 
which they move is driven one way. In the case of the wind¬ 
pipe for example it is driven up towards the throat, and the 
tenacious liquid or mucus which is thus swept along is finally 
coughed or “hawked” up and got rid off, instead of accumu¬ 
lating in the deeper air-passages away down in the chesty 

These cells afford an extremely interesting example of the 
division of physiological employments. Each proceeds from 
a cell which was primitively equally motile, automatic and 
nutritive in all its parts. But in the fully developed state 
the nutritive duties have been especially assumed by the 
conical cell-body, while the automatic and contractile prop¬ 
erties have been condensed, so to speak, in that modified 
portion of the primitive protoplasmic mass which forms the 
cilia. These, being supplied with elaborated food by the rest 
of the cell, are raised above the vulgar cares of life and have 
the opportunity to devote their whole attention to the per¬ 
formance of automatic movements; which are accordingly far 
more rapid and precise than those executed by the whole cell 
before any division of labor had occurred in it. 

That the movements depend upon the structure and com¬ 
position of the cells themselves, and not upon influences 
reaching them from the nervous or other tissues, is proved by 
the fact that they continue for a long time in isolated cells, 
removed and placed in a liquid, as blood-serum, which does 
not alter their physical constitution. In cold-blooded animals, 
as turtles, whose constituent tissues frequently retain their 
individual vitality long after that bond of union has been 
destroyed which constitutes the life of the whole animal as 






112 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


distinct from the lives of its different tissues, the ciliated cells 
in the windpipe have been found still at work three weeks 
after the general death of the animal. 

The Muscles. These are the main motor organs ; their 
general appearance is well known to every one in the lean of 
butcher’s meat. While amoeboid cells can only move them¬ 
selves, and (at least in the Human Body) ciliated cells the 
layer of liquid with which they may happen to be in contact, 
the majority of the muscles, being fixed to the skeleton, can, 
by alterations in their form, bring about changes in the form 
and position of nearly all parts of the Body. With the skele¬ 
ton and joints, they constitute pre-eminently the organs of 
motion and locomotion, and are governed by the nervous 
system which regulates their activity. In fact skeleton, 
muscles, and nervous system are correlated parts: the degree 
of usefulness of any one of them largely depends upon the 
more or less complete development of the others. Man’s 
highly endowed senses and his powers of reflection and 
reason would be of little use to him, were his muscles less 
fitted to carry out the dictates of his will or his joints less 
numerous or mobile. All the muscles are under the control 
of the nervous system, but all are not governed by it with the 
co-operation of will or consciousness; some move without our 
having any direct knowledge of the fact. This is especially the 
case with certain muscles which are not fixed to the skeleton 
but surround cavities or tubes in the Body, as the blood-vessels 
and the alimentary canal, and by their movements control 
the passage of substances through them. The former group, 
or skeletal muscles , are also from their microscopic characters 
known as striped muscles , while the latter, or visceral muscles , 
are called unstriped or plain muscles. The skeletal muscles 
being generally more or less subject to the control of the will 
(as for example those moving the limbs) are frequently spoken 
of as voluntary , and the visceral muscles, which change their 
form independently of the will, as involuntary . The heart- 
muscle forms a sort of intermediate link; it is not directly 
attached to the skeleton, but forms a hollow bag which drives 
on the blood contained in it and that quite involuntarily; but 
in its microscopic structure it resembles somewhat the skeletal 
voluntary muscles. The muscles of respiration might perhaps 
be cited as another intermediate group. They are striped 
skeletal muscles and, as we all know, are to a certain extent 


THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. 113 


subject to the will; any one can draw a deep breath when he 
chooses. But in ordinary quiet breathing we are quite un¬ 
conscious of their working, and even when attention is turned 
to them the power of control is limited; no one can voluntar¬ 
ily hold his breath long enough to sulfocate himself. As we 
shall see hereafter, moreover, any one or all of the striped 
muscles of the Body may be thrown into activityandepend- 
ently of or even against the will, as, to cite no other instances, 
is seen in the “ fidgets ” of nervousness and the irrepressible 
trembling of extreme terror; so that the names voluntary and 
< involuntary are not good ones. The functional differences 
between the two groups depend really more on the nervous 
connections of each than upon any essential difference in the 
properties of the so-called voluntary or involuntary muscular 
tissues themselves. 

The Skeletal Muscles. In its simplest form a skeletal 
muscle consists of a red soft central part, the belly, which 
tapers at each end and there passes into one or more dense 
white cords which consist almost entirely of white fibrous 
connective tissue. These terminal cords are called the tendons 
of the muscle and serve to attach it to parts of the .bony or 
cartilaginous skeleton. In Fig. 51 is shown the biceps muscle 
of the arm, which lies in front of the humerus . Its fleshy 
belly is seen to divide above and end there in two tendons, 
one of which, Bl, is fixed to the scapula, while the other, Bb, 
joins the tendon of a neighboring muscle (the coraco-brachial, 
Cb), and is also fixed above to the shoulder-blade. Near the 
elbow-joint the muscle is continued into a single tendon, 
B', which is fixed to the radius, but gives an offshoot, B”, to 
the connective-tissue membranes lying around the* elbow- 
joint. 

The belly of every muscle possesses the power of shorten¬ 
ing forcibly under certain conditions. In so doingnt pulls 
upon the tendons, which being composed of inextensible 
white fibrous tissue transmit the movement to the hard parts 
to which they are attached, just as a pull at one end of a rope 
may be made to act upon distant objects to which the other 
end is tied. The tendons are merely passive cords and are 
sometimes very long, as for instance in the case of the mus¬ 
cles of the fingers, the bellies of many of which lie away in 
the forearm. 

If the tendons at each end of a muscle were fixed to the 


114 


THE HUMAN BODY\ 



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THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. 115 

same bone the muscle would clearly be able to produce no 
movement, unless by bending or breaking the bone; the 
probable result in such a "case would be the tearing of the 
muscle by its own efforts. In the Body, however, the two 
ends of a muscle are always attached to different parts, 
usually two bones, between which more or less movement is 
permitted, and so when the muscle pulls it alters the relative 
positions of the parts to which its tendons are fixed. In the 
great majority of cases a true joint lies between the bones on 
which the muscle can pull, and when the latter contracts it 
produces movement at the joint. Many muscles even pass 
over two joints and can produce movement at either, as the 
biceps of the arm which, fixed at one end to the scapula and 
at the other to the radius, can move the bones at either the 
shoulder or elbow joint. Where a muscle passes over an ar¬ 
ticulation it is nearly always reduced to a narrow tendon; 
otherwise the bulky bellies lying around the joints would 
make them extremely clumsy and limit their mobility. 

Origin and Insertion of Muscles. Almost invariably 
that part of the skeleton to which one end of a muscle is 


c 



Fig. 52.—The biceps muscle and the arm-bones, to illustrate how, under ordinary 
circumstances, the elbow-joint is flexed when the muscle contracts. 

fixed is more easily moved than the part on which it pulls by 
its other tendon. The less movable attachment of a muscle 
is called its origin , the more movable its insertion . Taking 
for example the biceps of the arm, we find that when the 
belly of the muscle contracts and pulls on its upper and lower 
tendons, it commonly moves only the forearm, bending the 
elbow-joint as shown in Fig. 52. The shoulder is so much 
more firm that it serves as a fixed point, and so that end is 





116 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the origin of the muscle, and the forearm attachment, P, the 
insertion. It is clear, however, that this distinction in the 
mobility of the points of fixation of the muscle is only rela¬ 
tive, for, by changing the conditions, the insertion may becoine- 
the stationary and the origin the moved point; as for instance 
in going up a rope “ hand over hand.” In that case the radial 
end of the muscle is fixed and the shoulder is moved through 
space by its contraction. 

Different Forms of Muscles. Many muscles of the Body 
have the simple typical form of a belly tapering to a single 
tendon at each end as A, Fig. 53; but others divide at one 
end and are called two-headed or biceps muscles; while some 
are even three-headed or triceps muscles. On the other hand 
some muscles have no tendon at all at one end, the belly run¬ 
ning quite up to the point of attachment; and some have no 
tendon at either end. In many muscles a tendon runs along 
one side and the fibres of the belly are at¬ 
tached obliquely to it: such muscles ( B , Fig. 
53) are called penniform or featherlike; 
or a tendon runs obliquely down the middle 
of the muscle and has the fibres of the belly 
fixed obliquely on each side of it (C, Fig. 53), 
forming a bipenniform muscle: or even two 
•tendons may run down the belly and so form 
a tripenniform muscle. In a few cases a 
tendon is found in the middle of the belly 
as well as at each end of it; such muscles 
are called digastric. A muscle of this form 
(Fig. 54) is found in connection with the 
lower jaw. It arises by a tendon attached 
to the base of the skull; from there its first belly runs down¬ 
wards and forwards to the neck by the side of the hyoid bone, 
where it ends in a tendon which passes through a loop serving 
as a pulley. This is succeeded by a second 
belly directed upwards towards the ctiin, 
where it ends in a tendon inserted into the 
lower jaw. Running along the front of the 
abdomen from the pelvis to the chest is a long 
muscle on each side of the middle line called fig. 54 .-a digas, 
the rectus abdominis: it is polygastric, con> tncmuscle - 
sisting of four bellies separated by short tendons. Many 
muscles moreover are not rounded but form wide flat masses, 



Fig. 53.—Diagrams 
illustrating typical 
muscle with a central 
belly and two termi¬ 
nal tendons, b, a pen- 
niform muscle; c, a 
bipenniform muscle. 



THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. 117 


as for example the muscle 8s seen on the ventral side of the 
shoulder-blade in Fig. 51. 

Gross Structure of a Muscle. However the form of the 
skeletal muscles and the arrangement of their tendons may 
vary, the essential structure of all is the same. Each consists 
of a proper striped muscular tissue , which is its essential 
part, but which is supported by connective tissue, nourished 
by blood-vessels and lymphatics, and has its activity governed 
by nerves; so that a great variety of things go to form the 
complete organ. 

A loose sheath of areolar connective tissue, called the peri¬ 
mysium, envelops each muscle, and from this partitions run 
in and subdivide the belly into bundles or fasciculi which 
run from tendon to tendon, or for the whole length of the 
muscle when it has no tendons. The coarseness or fineness 
of butcher’s meat depends upon the size of these primary 
fasciculi, which differs in different muscles of the same ani¬ 
mal. These larger fasci¬ 
culi are subdivided by finer 
connective tissue m e m - 
branes into smaller ones 
(as shown in Fig. 55, which 
represents a few primary 
fasciculi of a muscle and 
the secondary fasciculi into 
which these are divided), 
each of which consists of a 
certain number of micro¬ 
scopic muscular fibres 
bound together by very fine connective tissue and enveloped 
in a close network of blood-vessels. Where a muscle tapers 
the fibres in the fasciculi become less numerous, and when a 
tendon is formed disappear altogether, leaving little but the 
connective tissue. 

Histology of Muscle. For the present we need only 
concern ourselves with the muscular fibres. Each of these is 
from eight to thirty-five millimetres to 1^ inches) long, but 
only from 0.034 to 0.055 mm. ( T | ¥ to inch) in diameter 
in its widest part and tapering to a blunt point at each end. 
In cross-section the fibres are irregularly polygonal. In long 
muscles with terminal tendons, no fibre runs the whole length 
of a fasciculus, which may be a foot or more long, but the 



Fig. 55.—A small bit of muscle composed 
of five primary fasciculi. A , natural size; 
B , the same magnified three diameters, to 
show the secondary fasciculi of which the 
primary are composed. 


118 


THE HUMAN BODY. 



fasciculus is made up of many successive fibres, the narrow 
end of each fitting in between the ends of those which follow 
it. In muscles with short fasciculi, the fibres 
may run the whole length of each of the 
latter. 

The tissue of the skeletal muscles is very 
easily recognized under the microscope: even 
when magnified only two or three hundred 
diameters each fibre is seen to be crossed for 
its whole width by regularly alternating dim¬ 
mer and brighter bands (Fig. 56) or stripes. 
In a relaxed fibre each band is about 
mm. (y^Q-o inch) in width, but the brighter 
parto’faTnuscie-fibie, bands are a little broader than the darker. 
its a c?oss^tVr^imi W an5In the contracted fibre both kinds of bands 
a couple of nuclei. k ecome narrower, especially the brighter, and 

these latter at the same time undergo an optical change and 
divert the light so that but little of it reaches the 
eye when the fibre is in focus; in consequence they 
then look darker than the original dimmer bands 
lying between them and now appearing as the 
brighter of the two. A fresh muscle-fibre shows 
on close examination a faint longitudinal striation. 

This is much more marked in specimens which 
have been preserved in alcohol, and these may be 
teased out into very fine threads which have been 
named fibrillce. 

On careful examination each fibre can be made 
out to possess an external envelope, the sarco- 
lemma , enveloping a softer material which makes 
up the main mass of the fibre; but there are in 
addition a number of oval nuclei which lie im¬ 
mediately under the sarcolemma and are placed 
lengthwise in the fibre. On account of its extreme 
thinness and transparency the sarcolemma cannot ^Sed so a as 

to tear its con¬ 
tents while the 
toughersarco¬ 
lemma, else¬ 
where so close¬ 
ly applied to 
the rest as to 
be invisible, 
remains un¬ 
torn and con¬ 
spicuous. 



Fig. 57.—A 
small piece of 
muscular fi¬ 
bre. At a the 
fibre has been 


be recognized when lying in its natural position, 
closely applied to the striped contents, but being 
tougher than these it sometimes remains unbroken 
when they are crushed and then (Fig. 57) comes 
into view as an apparently structureless mem¬ 
brane bridging over the gap. The sarcolemma 
is imperforate except at one point where the central por- 




THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. 119 


tion (or axis cylinder , see Chap. XII) of a nerve-fibre pene¬ 
trates it. 

The striped contents which occupy most of the cavity en¬ 
closed by the sarcolemma are the essential contractile portion 
of the fibre and during life are soft or semi-fluid: soon after 
death they solidify or clot and thus death-stiffening ( rigor 
mortis) is produced. At intervals, corresponding to the 
middle zone of each bright band of the relaxed fibre, an 
extremely delicate membrane {membrane of Krause , K, Fig. 
58) crosses the fibre, thus dividing the rest of the contents 
into a series of disks, each consisting of a dim centre answering 



Fig 58.—Diagrams to illustrate the structure of a small piece of a striped 
musde-fibre. A. in the relaxed, B, in the contracted condition; K, K. membranes 
of Krause; H. H. bands of Hensen; an, bb, parts of sarcostyles, showing their con¬ 
strictions near Krause's membranes, and the tubulated sarcosomes in each; c,d,e,/, 
a sarcous element; o, hyaloplasm; g, sarcoplasm. 

to the whole of a dark band, and two brighter ends, each cor¬ 
responding to half of a bright band. Each disk is a sarcomere. 
Under certain conditions, in fact, a fibre may be split up 
crosswise into a number of such disks. AYhen afresh muscle- 
fibre is artificially stretched and examined with a very high 
magnifying power there may further be made out in the 
middle of each dim band a transverse line {band of Hensen , 
H, Fig. 58) slightly brighter than the rest of the dim band. 

The main bulk of each fibre consists of polygonal rods, the 
muscle-columns or sarcostyles {aa, bb , Fig. 58), which are inter- 

























120 


THE HUMAN BOLT. 


rupted in their course by Krause’s membranes. That portion 
of a sarcostyle, cclef \ included between two consecutive mem¬ 
branes is a sarcous element. The terminal portions of each 
sarcous element are of softer consistence than most of the mid¬ 
dle part and correspond to the hyaloplasm (Fig. 7) of a 
typical primitive cell, and the material composing them may 
be designated by the same name. The central portion of each 
sarcous element is mainly made up of a firmer material which 
stains with hemotoxylin and answers in general to the reticulum 
of a primitive cell: it is named the sarcous substance or, better, 
the sarcosome. Each sarcosome is permeated by fine longi¬ 
tudinal tubules which commence at its ends but do not reach 
to its centre and are thus divided into two sets by a median 
transverse partition in which the band of Hensen lies. These 
tubules are filled with hyaloplasm. The sarcous elements are 
constricted where they abut on Krause’s membrane and in 
consequence each sarcostyle is narrowed at regular intervals 
along its course. The spaces between the sarcostyles are 
filled by a very soft sarcoplasm , which is of course more 
abundant in the regions of Krause’s membranes, where the 
muscle-columns are constricted. In mammalian muscle the 
sarcoplasm is present in relatively much smaller amount than 
indicated in Fig. 58. In fresh specimens it can, however, 
be made out in the form of fine dark lines with swollen ends, 
lying between contiguous sarcous elements. Gold chloride 
stains the sarcoplasm deeply but leaves the sarcostyles un¬ 
colored : hence in specimens so prepared the edges or ends of 
the sarcoplastic septa appear as very conspicuous lines, which 
look, especially in cross-sections, as if due to a network of 
fibres, as which they have been described by several observers, 
and been regarded as the essential contractile part of the 
fibre. In a relaxed muscle-fibre ( A , Fig. 58) the sarcosomes 
are comparatively long and narrow; but during contraction 
( B) they become shorter and thicker and bulged out in the 
middle, and more hyaloplasm passes into their tubules, which 
become distended, especially near their deeper ends: the band 
of Hensen also ceases to be visible. Contraction of the whole 
fibre is thus accompanied by or, rather, is due to a transfer¬ 
ence of hyaloplasm from the ends of each sarcomere into the 
interior of the sarcosomes of its central portion, in conse¬ 
quence of which the whole fibre becomes shorter and thicker. 
The swelling of the sarcosome pushes aside some of the 


THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. 121 

sarcoplasm lying between them and the displaced portion ac¬ 
cumulates nearer the ends of the sarcous elements, in the 
space left by that portion of the hyaloplasm which has entered 
the tubules: compare gg in A and B, Fig. 58. 

Arguing from the analogy of the amoeboid cell in which, 
as we have seen (p. 27), parts consisting only of hyaloplasm 
can exhibit movements, it would seem probable that in the 
muscle-fibre the hyaloplasm is to be regarded as the active 
contractile portion and the sarcosomes as a framework 
directing the form which the contracted hyaloplasm shall 
assume, and assuring that it shall be a precise and definite 
shortening in the direction of the long axis of the fibre with 
a widening in the transverse direction, instead of such irreg¬ 
ular changes of form as are exhibited by the amoeboid cell 
with its irregularly arranged or, sometimes, entirely absent 
reticulum. That the hyaloplasm and not the sarcoplasm 
form the contractile part of the fibre is proved by the fact 
that in some insect-muscles in which they are unusually large, 
it is possible to isolate them while alive and observe them still 
contracting. 

The nuclei of the fibres lie in the sarcoplasm, which rep¬ 
resents a part of the original protoplasm of the row of cells 
from which each muscle-fibre develops, that has remained 
but little changed while the rest was differentiated into 
sarcous elements. 

The blood-vessels and nerve-fibres supplied to the skeletal 
muscles are numerous. The larger blood-vessels run in the 
coarser partitions of the connective tissue lying between the 
fasciculi and give off fine branches which form a network be¬ 
tween the individual fibres but never penetrate the sarcolemma. 

Connected with each muscle-fibre is a nerve-fibre of the 
white variety (Chap. XII). The central core of the nerve-fibre 
ends in an oval expansion (end plate) which contains many 
nuclei arid lies close under the sarcolemma, its deeper side 
being in immediate contact and possibly continuous with 
the striated contents. These nerve-fibres are motor or con¬ 
cerned in exciting a contraction of the muscle-fibre. Other 
white nerve-fibres are connected with very peculiar bodies 
found scattered throughout the muscle, but especially numer¬ 
ous near the tendons. They are usually of a size just visible 
to the unaided eye and from their form have been named 
muscle-spindles. They appear to be sensory in function* 


122 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Somewhat similar bodies (Golgi's tendon-organs) are found 
in the tendons and are also richly supplied with nerve-fibres. 
In histological structure the tendon-organs and the muscle- 
spindles appear to be allied to Pacinian bodies (Chap. XXXV). 

Structure of the Unstriped Muscles. Of these the 
muscular coat of the stomach (Fig. 59) is a good example. 



Fig. 59.—The muscular coat of the stomach. 


They have no definite tendons, but form expanded membranes 
surrounding cavities, so that they have no 
definite origin or insertion. Like the skel¬ 
etal muscles they consist of proper contractile 
elements, with accessory connective tissue, 
blood-vessels and nerves. Their fibres, how¬ 
ever, have a very different microscopic struc¬ 
ture. They present a slightly marked longi¬ 
tudinal but no cross striation and are made 
up of elongated cells (Fig. 60), bound to¬ 
gether by a small quantity of cementing 
material. The cells vary considerably in 
size, but on the average are about mm. 
(-jr-^- inch) in length. Each is flattened 
in one plane, tapers off at each end. and 
possesses a very thin enveloping membrane; 
in its interior lies an elongated nucleus with 
one or two nucleoli. These cells have the 

... power of shortening in the direction of their 

muscle-cells. long axes, and so of diminishing the capacity 
of the cavities in the walls of which they lie. 














THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOTOR ORGANS. 123 


Cardiac Muscular Tissue. This consists of nucleated 
branched cells which unite to form a network, in the inter¬ 
stices of which blood-capillaries and 
nerve-fibres run. The cells present 
transverse striations, but not so distinct 
as those of the skeletal muscles, and are 
said to have no sarcolemma. 

The Chemistry of Muscular Tissue. 

The chemical structure of the living 
muscular fibre is unknown, but some 
idea as to it may be obtained from ex¬ 
amination of the substances it yields on 
proximate analysis. Muscle contains 75 

* l ut, ui.—v^ttiuittu museu- 

per cent ot water; and, among: other ^‘If 8 ” 6 ’ rnasuifledabout 

7 . . & 400 diameters. The cell- 

morganic constituents, phosphates and boundaries and cell-nuclei 

11-1 J. . . _ are indicated only in the 

Chlorides 01 potassium, sodium, and right-hand portion of the 
magnesium. When at rest a living figure ' 
muscle is feebly alkaline, but after hard work, or when dying, 
this reaction is reversed through the formation of sarcolactic 
acid (0 3 H 6 0 3 ). Muscles contain small quantities of grape- 
sugar and glycogen, and of organic nitrogenous crystalline 
compounds, especially kreatin (C 4 H u N 3 0 2 ). As in the case of 
all other physiologically active tissues, however, the main 
post-mortem constituents of the muscular fibres are proteid 
substances, and it is probable that like protoplasm itself (p. 
27) the essential contractile part of the tissue consists of a 
complex body containing proteid, carbohydrate and fatty 
residues; and that during muscular work this is broken up, 
yielding proteids, carbon dioxide, sarcolactic acid, and prob¬ 
ably other things. 

During life and for a certain time after general death the 
muscles are soft, translucent, extensible and elastic, and 
neutral or feebly alkaline in reaction; after a period which in 
warm-blooded animals is brief (varying from a few minutes 
to three or four hours) they gradually become harder, more 
opaque, less extensible and less elastic, and distinctly acid in 
reaction. The result of these changes is the well-known 
cadaveric rigidity or rigor mortis. The rigid condition lasts 
for a day or longer and then it gradually and finally disappears 
and more marked decomposition changes commence. Until 
a short time before the commencement of rigor the muscles 
remain contractile and can be thrown into activity by various 




124 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


excitants, as electric shocks; that is to say, although the body 
in general is dead and the beat of the heart and the flow of 
blood have ceased, yet the muscles retain their vitality for a 
while. This is especially the case with the muscles of cold¬ 
blooded animals, as frogs and turtles, the muscles of which 
may, especially if kept cool, retain their living properties for 
several hours after removal from the body of the animal. 

If muscles be taken in an early stage of rigor, rapidly freed 
as much as possible from tendons, fats and connective tissue, 
and then finely minced and thoroughly washed with water, 
most of the salts and crystallizable muscle ingredients can be 
dissolved away, along with a small amount of albumens; but by 
far the greater part of the albumen is left behind in the form 
of myosin , aproteid which is insoluble in water. On treating 
the residue with a 10 per cent solution of ammonium chloride 
the myosin dissolves and may be obtained as a flocculent 
white precipitate by allowing the solution to fall drop by drop 
into a large quantity of water, or by adding to it a consider¬ 
able proportion of common salt. Myosin is related chemically 
to fibrinogen and globulin, and its solutions in 10 per cent 
neutral saline are coagulated by heat at the same temperature 
(56° C. or 158° F.) as the former. 

Although myosin is apparently the least altered form in 
which its chief proteid constituent can be separated from 
muscle, it does not appear to exist, or at least exists in small 
quantity if at all, in living muscle; it is an early product of 
post-mortem chemical changes. Its precursor in living muscle 
has been named myosinogen , and a solution containing that 
substance may be obtained as follows: Perfectly fresh and 
still contractile muscles are cut out from a frog which has 
just been killed by destruction of its brain and spinal cord, a 
proceeding which entirely deprives the animal of conscious¬ 
ness and the power of using its muscles, but leaves these lat¬ 
ter unaltered and alive for some time. The excised muscles 
are thrown into a vessel cooled below 0° 0. by a freezing mix¬ 
ture and are thus frozen hard before any great chemical 
change has had time to occur in them. The solidified mus¬ 
cles are then cut up into thin slices, the bits thrown on a 
Cooled filter and let gradually warm up to the freezing-point 
of water, after the addition of some ice-cold 0.5 per cent solu¬ 
tion of common salt. Gradually a small quantity of a tena¬ 
cious alkaline and transparent liquid filters through. This 


THE CHEMISTRY OF MUSCLE. 125 

liquid, known us the muscle-plasma, contains myosinogen and 
like blood-plasma is spontaneously coagulable. It quickly 
sets into a transparent jelly and this soon separates into mus¬ 
cle-serum and muscle-clot, the latter consisting of myosin. 
Dissolved in the muscle-serum are found small quantities of 
several albumens, one much resembling the serum-albumen of 
blood. The spontaneous clothing of the plasma, and presum¬ 
ably the natural formation of myosin during rigor mortis, are 
due to the action on myosinogen of an enzyme, muscle-fer¬ 
ment, much resembling fibrin-ferment. The clotting is 
accompanied by a change of reaction from the alkaline or 
neutral of the plasma to a markedly acid one: this appears to 
be mainly due to the formation of sarcolactic acid, the quan¬ 
tity of which bears a proportion to that of the myosin formed, 
suggesting that both may be products of the breaking-down 
of a pre-existent more complex substance. It has further been 
shown that when a muscle passes into the state of rigor it 
evolves a certain amount of carbon dioxide, and that the 
quantity of this varies with the quantity of myosin and of 
sarcolactic acid formed. Hence it has been suggested that in 
the living muscle there is a substance which after death 
breaks up yielding (with possibly other things) myosinogen, 
sarcolactic acid and carbon dioxide; and further that this 
chemical change is associated with the liberation of energy 
(Chap. XX) which in the dead muscle is set free mainly as 
the heat which is known to be evolved by muscles passing 
into rigor. 

The precipitate produced when myosin solutions are 
heated is coagulated proteid (p. 10) and insoluble in dilute 
acids and alkalies in which myosin itself is very soluble. 
When dissolved in dilute acids myosin is converted into syn- 
tonin, which was formerly supposed to be the chief form of 
proteid present in dead muscles. Syntonin is insoluble in 
water and neutral saline solutions, but soluble in dilute acids 
and alkalies, and its solutions are not coagulated by boiling. 

Beef Tea and Liebig’s Extract. From the above-stated 
facts it is clear that when a muscle is boiled in water its myo¬ 
sin is coagulated and left behind in the meat r even if cook¬ 
ing be commenced by soaking in cold water the myosin still 
k remains, as it is as insoluble in cold water as in hot. Beef tea 
as ordinarily made, then, contains little but the flavoring 
matters and salts of the meat, traces of some albumens and 


126 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


some gelatin, the latter derived from the connective tissues 
of the muscle. The flavoring matters and salts make it decep¬ 
tively taste as if it were a strong solution of the whole meat, 
and the gelatin causes it to “ set ” on cooling, so the cook 
feels quite sure she has got out “ all the strength of the meat,” 
whereas the beef tea so prepared contains but little of the 
most nutritious proteid portions, which in an insipid shrunken 
form are left when the liquid is strained off. Various pro¬ 
posals have been made with the object of avoiding this and 
getting a really nutritive beef tea; as for example chopping 
the raw meat fine and soaking it in strong brine for some 
hours to dissolve out the myosin; or extracting it with dilute 
acids which turn the myosin into syntonin and dissolve it and 
at the same time render it non-coagulable by heat when subse¬ 
quently boiled. Such methods, however, make unpalatable 
compounds which invalids will not take. Beef tea is a slight 
stimulant, and often extremely useful in temporarily main¬ 
taining the strength and in preparing the stomach for other 
food, but its direct value as a food is slight, and it cannot be 
relied upon to keep up a patient’s strength for any length of 
time. There can be no doubt that thousands of sick persons 
have in the past and are being to-day starved to death on it. 
Liebig’s extract of meat is essentially a very strong beef tea; 
containing much of the flavoring substances of the meat, 
nearly all its salts and the crystalline nitrogenous bodies, such 
as kreatin, which exist in muscle, but hardly any of its really 
nutritive parts, as was pointed out by Liebig himself. From 
its stimulating effects it is often useful to persons in feeble 
health, but other food should be given with it. It may also 
be used on account of its flavor to add to the “ stock ” of soup 
and for similar purposes ; but the erroneousness of the com¬ 
mon belief that it is a highly nutritious food cannot be too 
strongly insisted upon. Under the name of liquid extracts 
of meat other substances have been prepared by subjecting 
meat to chemical processes in which it undergoes changes 
similar to those experienced in digestion: the myosin is thus 
rendered soluble in water and uncoagulable by heat, and such 
extracts if properly prepared are nutritious and can often be 
absorbed when meat in the solid form cannot be digested:, 
they may thus help the stomach over a crisis, but are not, 
even the best of them, to be depended on as anything but 
temporary substitutes for other food; or in some cases as use¬ 
ful additions to it. 


CHAPTER X, 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 

Contractility. The characteristic physiological property 
of muscular tissue, and that for which it is employed in the 
Body, is the faculty possessed by its fibres of shortening 
forcibly under certain circumstances. The direction in which 
this shortening occurs is always that of the long axis of the 
fibre in both plain and striped muscles, and it is accompanied 
by an almost equivalent thickening in other diameters, so that 
when a muscle contracts it does not shrivel up or diminish 
its bulk in any appreciable way; it simply changes its form. 
When a muscle contracts it also becomes harder and more 
rigid, especially if it has to overcome any resistance. This 
and the change of form can be well felt by placing the fingers 
of one hand over the biceps muscle lying in front of the hu¬ 
merus of the other arm. When the muscle is contracted so 
as to bend the elbow it can be felt to swell out and harden as 
it shortens. Every schoolboy knows that when he appeals to 
another to “ feel his muscle” he contracts the latter so as to 
make it thicker and apparently more massive as well as 
harder. In statues the prominences on the surface indicating 
the muscles beneath the skin are made very conspicuous 
when violent effort is represented, so as to indicate that the 
muscles are in vigorous action. In a muscular fibre we find 
no longer the slow, irregular, and indefinite changes of form 
seen in amoeboid slightly differentiated cells; they are replaced 
by a precise, rapid and definite change of form. Muscular 
tissue represents a group of cells in the bodily community 
which have taken up the one special duty of executing 
changes of form, and in proportion as these cells have fewer 
other things to do, they do that one better. This contractility 
of the muscular fibres may be briefly described as a passage 
from the state of rest, in w T hich the fibres are long and narrow, 
into the state of activity, in which they are shorter and thicker: 
this change is made with considerable force, and thus the mus- 

127 


128 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


cles move parts attached to their tendons. When the state of 
activity has passed off the fibres suffer themselves to be ex¬ 
tended again by any force pulling upon them, and so regain 
their resting shape; and since in the living Body almost in¬ 
variably other parts are put upon the stretch when any mus¬ 
cle contracts, these by their elasticity serve to pull the latter 
back again to its primitive shape. No muscular fibre is 
known to have the power of actively expanding after it has 
contracted: in the active state it forcibly resists extension, but 
once the contraction is completely over, it suffers itself readily 
to be pulled back to its resting form. The contracted state 
lasts always longer, however, than the mere time occupied by 
the muscle in shortening: as will be seen later, the full state 
of contraction is gradually attained and gradually disappears. 

Irritability. With that modification of the primitive 
protoplasm of an amoeboid embryonic cell which gives rise to : 
a muscular fibre with its great contractility, there goes a loss' 
of other properties. Nearly all spontaneity disappears; mus¬ 
cles are not automatic like primitive protoplasm or ciliated 
cells; except under certain very special conditions they remain 
at rest unless excited from without. The amount of external 
change required to excite the living muscular fibre is, how¬ 
ever, very small; muscle tissue is highly irritable , a very 
little thing being sufficient to call forth a powerful contrac-' 
tion. In the living Human Body the exciting force, or stim¬ 
ulus , acting upon a muscle is almost invariably a nervous 
impulse, a molecular movement transmitted along the nerve- 
fibre attached to it, and upsetting the molecular equilibrium 
of the muscle. It is through the nerves that the will acts 
upon the muscle-fibre, and accordingly injury to the nerves of 
a part, as the face or a limb, causes paralysis of its muscles. 
They may still be there, intact and quite ready to work, but 
there are no means of sending commands to them, and so 
they remain idle. 

Although a nervous impulse is the natural physiological 
muscular stimulus it is not the only one known. If a muscle 
be exposed in a living animal and a slight but sudden tap be 
given to it, or a hot bar be suddenly brought near it, or an elec¬ 
tric shock be sent through it, or a drop of glycerin or of solu¬ 
tion of ammonia be placed on it, it will contract; so that in 
addition to the natural nervous stimulus, muscles are irritable 
under the influence of mechanical, thermal, electrical, and 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 129 

chemical stimuli. One condition of the efficacy of each of 
them is that it shall act with some suddenness; a very slowly 
increased pressure, even if ultimately very great, or a very 
slowly raised temperature, or a slowly increased electrical cur¬ 
rent passed through it, will not excite the muscle; although 
far less pressure, warmth, or electricity more rapidly applied 
would stimulate it powerfully. Once an electric current has 
been set up through a muscle, its steady passage does not aot 
as a stimulus; but a sudden diminution or increase of it does 
It may perhaps still be objected that it is not proved that any 
of these stimuli excite the muscular fibres, and that in all 
these cases it is possible that the muscle is only excited 
through its nerves. For the various stimuli named above 
also excite nerves (see Chap. XIII), and when we applv them 
to the muscle we may really be acting first upon the fine 
nerve-endings there, and only indirectly and through the 
mediation of these upon the muscular fibres. That the mus¬ 
cular fibres have a proper irritability of their own, independ¬ 
ently of their nerves, is, however, shown by the action of cer¬ 
tain drugs—for example curare, a South American Indian 
arrow poison. When this substance is introduced into a 
wound all the striped muscles are apparently poisoned, and 
the animal dies of suffocation because of the cessation of the 
breathing movements. But the poison does not really act on 
the muscles themselves: it kills the muscle-nerves, but leaves 
the muscle intact; and it has been proved to kill the very 
endings of the muscle-nerves right down in the muscle-fibres 
themselves. Yet after its administration we still find that 
the various non-physiological stimuli referred to alove make 
the muscles contract just as powerfully as before the poison¬ 
ing, so we must conclude that the muscles themselves are 
irritable in the absence of all nerve stimuli—or, what amounts 
to the same thing, when all their nerve-fibres have been poi¬ 
soned. The experiment also shows that the contractility of a 
muscle is a property belonging to itself, and that its contract¬ 
ing force is not something derived from the nerves attached 
to it. The nerve stimulus simply acts like the electric shock 
or sudden blow and arouses the muscle to manifest a property 
which it already possesses. The older physiologists observing 
that muscular paralysis followed when the nervous connection 
between a muscle and the brain was interrupted, concluded 
that the nerves gave the muscles the power of contracting. 


130 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


They believed that in the brain there was a great store of a 
mysterious thing called vital spirits , and that some of this 
was ejected from the brain along the nerve to the muscle, 
when the latter was to be set at work, and gave it its working 
power. Wo now know that such is not the case, but that a 
muscle-fibre is a collection of highly irritable material which 
can have its equilibrium upset in a definite way, causing it to 
change its shape, under the influence of certain slight disturb¬ 
ing forces, one of which is a nervous impulse; and since in 
the Body no other kind of stimulus usually reaches the mus¬ 
cles, they remain at rest when their nervous connections are 
severed. But the muscles paralyzed in this way can still, in 
the living Body, be made to contract by sending electrical 
shocks through them. Physiologically, then, muscle is a con¬ 
tractile and irritable, but not an automatic, tissue. 

A Simple Muscular Contraction. Most of the details con¬ 
cerning the physiological properties of muscles have been 
studied on those of cold-blooded animals. A frog’s muscle 
will retain all its living properties for some time after re¬ 
moval from the body of the animal, and so can be experi¬ 
mented on with ease, while the muscles of a rabbit or cat 
soon die under those circumstances. Enough has, however, 
been observed on the muscles of the higher animals to show 
that in all essentials they agree with those of the frog or ter¬ 
rapin. 

When a single electric shock is sent through a muscle, the 
nerves of which have been thrown out of action by curare, it 
rapidly shortens and then, if a weight be hanging on it, rap¬ 
idly lengthens again. The whole series of phenomena from 
the moment of stimulation until the muscle regains its rest¬ 
ing form is known as a simple muscular contraction or a 
“twitch”: it occupies in frog’s muscle about one tenth of a 
second. So brief a movement as this cannot be followed in 
its details by direct observation, but it is possible to record it 
and study its phases at leisure. This may be done by firmly 
fixing the upper tendon of an isolated muscle, M, Fig. 62, 
and attaching the other end at d to a lever, l , which can move 
about the fulcrum/: the end cf the long arm of the lever 
bears a point, p, which scratches on a smooth smoked surface, 
8. Suppose the surface to be placed so that the writing point 
of the lever is at a; if the muscle now contracts it will raise 
the point of the lever, and a line ac will be drawn on the 


Fi«. 62 .—Diagram to illustrate the method of obtaining a graphic record of a muscular contraction. 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 


131 
























V62 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


smoked surface, its vertical height, cm, being dependent, first, 
on the extent of the shortening of the muscle, and second, on 
the proportion between the long and short arms of the lever: 
the longer fp is as compared with fd, the more will the actual 
shortening of the muscle be magnified. With the lever shown 
in the figure this magnification would be about ten times, so 
that one tenth of cm would be the extent of the shortening 
of the muscle. Suppose, next, the smoked surface to be moved 
to such position that the writing point of the leter touches it 
at i, and, the muscle being left at rest, the surface to be 
moved evenly from left to right; the horizontal line io would 
then be traced, its length depending on the distance through 
which 8 moved during the time the lever was marking on it: 
and it is clear that if S move uniformly, and we know its rate 
of movement, we can very readily calculate from the length of 
io how long S was moving while that line was being traced: 
for example, if we know the rate of movement to be ten 
inches per second, and on measurement find io to be an inch 
long, the time during which the surface was moving must 
have been of a second; and each tenth of io correspond 
to of a second. 

If we set the recording surface in motion and while the 
lever point is tracing a horizontal line cause the muscle to 
contract, the point will be raised as long as the muscle is 
contracted, and the line drawn by it will be due to a 
combination of two simultaneous movements—a horizontal, 
due to the motion of S, a nearly vertical, due to the shorten¬ 
ing of the muscle; the resulting line is a curve known 
as the curve of a simple muscular contraction. Let the 
surface 8 be placed so that the writing point is at q and 
then be set in uniform motion from left to right at the same 
rate as before (ten inches per second). When the point is 
opposite t , stimulate the muscle by an electric shock; the 
result, until the muscle has fully lengthened again, will be the 
curve tuvwxy, from which many things may be learned. In the 
first place we see that the muscle does not commence to con¬ 
tract at the very instant of stimulation, but at an appreciably 
later time, and during the interval the lever draws the hori¬ 
zontal line tu\ this period, occupied by preparatory changes 
within the muscle, is known as the period of latent excitation . 
Then the muscle begins to shorten and the lever to rise, at first 
slowly from u to v, then more rapidly, and again more slowly 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 133 


until the summit of the contraction is reached at w. The 
muscle does not now instantly relax, but only gradually passes 
back to the resting state: beginning at to, we see the descent 
of the curve is for a time slow, then more rapid, and finally 
slow again from x to y, when the contraction is completed 
and the lever once more traces only the horizontal line yy, due 
to the continued movement of the recording surface. The 
curve then shows three distinct phases in the contraction: the 
period of latent excitation; the period of shortening; the 
period of elongating. Knowing the rate of horizontal move¬ 
ment, we can measure off the time occupied by each phase. 
The horizontal distance from t to u represents the time taken 
by the latent excitation; from u to z, the time occupied in 
shortening; from z to y, the time taken in elongation: in a 
fresh frog’s muscle these times are respectively T ^, T f 7 

of a second. In the muscles of warm-blooded animals they 
are all shorter, but the difficulties in the way of accurate ex¬ 
periment are very great. If we know the relative lengths of 
the arms of the lever we can of course readily calculate from 
the height, toz , of the curve the extent of shortening of 
the muscle. With a single electrical stimulation this is never 
more than one fourth the total length of the muscle. 

In Fig. 62 the accessory apparatus used in practice to in¬ 
dicate on the moving surface the exact instant of stimulation 
and to measure the rate at which S moves have been omitted.* 

Physiological Tetanus. It is obvious that the ordinary 
movements of the Body are not brought about by such tran¬ 
sient muscular contractions as those just described. Even a 
wink lasts longer than one tenth of a second. Our movements 
are, in fact, due to more prolonged contractions which may be 
described as consisting of several simple contractions fused 
together, and known as “ tetanic contractions ”/ it might be 
better to call them “ compound contractions,” since the word 
tetanus has long been used by pathologists to signify a dis¬ 
eased state, such as occurs in strychnine poisoning and hydros 
phobia, in which most of the muscles of the Btdy are thrown 
into prolonged and powerful involuntary contractions. 

If, while a frog’s muscle is still shortening under the in¬ 
fluence of one electric shock, another stimulus be.given it, it 
will contract again and the new contraction will be added on 
co that already existing, without any period of elongation 
occurring between them. While the muscle is still contract- 


134 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ing under the influence of the second stimulus a third electric 
shock will make it contract more, and so on, until the muscle 
is shortened as much as is possible to if for that strength of 
stimulus. If now the stimuli be repeated at the proper in¬ 
tervals, each new one will not produce any further shortening, 
but, each acting on the muscle before the effect of the last 
has begun to pass off, the muscle will be kept in a state of 
permanent or “ tetanic” contraction; and this can be main¬ 
tained, by continuing the application of the stimuli, until the 
organ begins to get exhausted or “ fatigued elongation then 
commences in spite of the stimulation. When our muscles 
are stimulated in the Body, from the nerve-centres through 
the nerves, they receive from the latter a sufficient number 
of stimuli in a second (the exact number is still doubtful) to 
throw them into tetanic contractions. In other words, not. 
even in the most rapid movements of the Body is a muscle 
made to execute a simple muscular contraction; it is always 
a longer or a shorter tetanus. When very quick movements 
are executed, as in performing rapid passages on the piano, 
the result is obtained by contracting two opposing muscles 
and alternately strengthening and weakening a little the 
tetanus of each. 

Causes affecting the Degree of Muscular Contraction. 
The extent of shortening which can be called forth in a mus¬ 
cle varies with the stimulus. In the first place, a single stim¬ 
ulus can never cause a muscle to contract as much as rapidly 
repeated stimuli of the same strength—since in the latter 
case we get, as already explained, several simple contractions 
such as a single stimulus would call forth, piled on the top 
of one another. With powerful repeated electrical stimuli 
a muscle can be made to shorten to one third of its resting 
length, but in the Body the strongest effort of the Will never 
produces a contraction of that extent. Apart from the rate 
of stimulation, the strength of the stimulus has some influ¬ 
ence, a greater stimulus causing a greater contraction; but 
very soon a point is reached beyond which increase of stimu¬ 
lus produces no increased contraction; the muscle has reached 
its limit. The amount of load carried by the muscle (or the 
resistance opposed to its shortening) has also an influence, 
and that in a very remarkable way. Suppose we have a frog’s 
calf-muscle, carrying no weight, and find that with a stimulus 
of a certain strength it shortens two millimeters (^ inch). 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 


135 


Then if we hang one gram (15.5 grains) on it and give it the 
same stimulus, it will be found to contract more, say four or 
five millimeters, and so on, up to the point when it carries 
eight or ten grams. After that an increased weight will, 
with the same stimulus, cause a less contraction. So that up 
to a certain limit, resistance to the shortening of the muscle 
makes it more able to shorten:.the mere greater extension of 
the muscle due to the greater resistance opposed to its short¬ 
ening, puts it into a state in which it is able to contract more 
powerfully. Fatigue diminishes the working power of a 
muscle and rest restores it, especially if the circulation of the 
blood be going on in it at the same time. A frog's muscle 
nut out of the body will, however, be considerably restored 
during a period of rest, even although no blood flow through it. 

Cold increases the time occupied by a simple muscular 
contraction, and also impairs the contractile power, as we 
find in our own limbs when “ numbed" with cold, though in 
that case the hurtful influence of the cold on the nerves no 
doubt also plays a part. Moderate warmth on the other hand, 
up to near the point at which death stiffening (often in this 
case spoken of as heat rigor) occurs, diminishes the time 
taken by a contraction, and increases its height. Heat rigor 
is produced in excised frog’s muscle by heating it to about 
40° C. (104° F.) The required temperature is higher in warm 
blooded animals, especially while the circulation through the 
muscle is maintained: in fevers temperatures considerably 
greater than the above have been observed without the occur¬ 
rence of muscular rigor. 

The Measure of Muscular Work. The work done by a 
muscle in a given contraction, when it lifts a weight verti¬ 
cally against gravity, is measured by the weight moved, mul¬ 
tiplied by the distance through which it is moved. When a 
muscle contracts carrying no load it does very little work, 
lifting only its own weight; when loaded with one gram and 
lifting it five millimeters it does five gram-millimeters of 
work, just as an engineer would say an engine had done so 
many kilogrammeters or foot-pounds. If loaded with ten 
grams and lifting it six millimeters it would do sixty gram- 
millimeters of work. Even after the weight becomes so great 
that it is lifted through a less distance, the work done by the 
muscle goes on increasing, for the heavier weight lifted more 
than compensates for the less distance through which it is 


136 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


raised. For example, if the above muscle were loaded with 
fifty grams it would maybe lift that weight only 1.5 millime¬ 
ters, but it would then do seventy-five gram-millimeters of 
work, which is more than when it lifted ten grams six milli¬ 
meters. A load is, however, at last reached with which the 
muscle does less work, the lift becoming very little indeed, 
until at last the weight becomes so great that the muscle can¬ 
not lift it at all and so does no work when stimulated. Starting 
then from the time when the muscle carried no load and did 
no work, we pass with increasing weights, through phases in 
which it does more and more work, until with one particular 
load it does the greatest amount possible to it with that stim¬ 
ulus: after that, with increasing loads less work is done, until 
finally a load is reached with which the muscle again does no 
work. What is true of one muscle is of course true of all, 
and what is true of work done against gravity is true of all 
muscular work, so that there is one precise load with which 
a beast of burden or a man can do the greatest possible 
amount of work in a day. With a lighter or heavier load the 
distance through which it can be moved will be more or less, 
but the actual work done always less. In the living Body, 
however, the working of the muscles depends so much on. 
other things, as the due action of the circulatory and respira¬ 
tory systems and the nervous energy or “grit” (upon which 
the stimulation of the muscles depends) of the individual 
man or beast, that the greatest amount of work obtainable is 
not a simple mechanical problem as it is with the excised 
muscle. 

From what precedes it is clear that the molecular changes 
which take place in a contracting muscle fibre are eminently 
susceptible of modification by slight changes in its environ¬ 
ment. The evidence indicates that the contractility of a 
muscle depends, not upon a vital force entirely distinct from 
ordinary inanimate forces, but upon an arrangement of its 
material elements which is only maintained under certain 
conditions and is eminently modifiable by changes in the 
surroundings. 

Influence of the Form of the Muscle on its Working 
Power. The amount of work that any muscle can do de¬ 
pends of course largely upon its physiological state; a healthy 
well-nourished muscle can do more than a diseased or starved 
one; but allowing for such variations the work which can be 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 137 


done by a muscle varies with its form. The thicker the mus¬ 
cle, that is the greater the number of fibres present in a sec¬ 
tion made across the long axes of the fasciculi, the greater 
the load that can be lifted or the other resistance that can be 
overcome. On the other hand, the extent through which a 
muscle can move a weight increases with the length of its 
fasciculi. A muscle a foot in length can contract more than 
a muscle six inches long, and so would move a bone through 
a greater distance, provided the resistance were not too great 
for its strength. But if the shorter muscle had double the 
thickness, then it could lift twice the weight that the longer 
muscle could. We find in the Body muscles constructed on 
both plans; some to have a great range of movement, others 
to overcome great resistance, besides numerous intermediate 
forms which cannot be called either long and slender or short 
and thick; many short muscles for example are not specially 
thick, but are short merely because the parts on which they 
act lie near together. It must be borne in mind, too, that 
many apparently long muscles are really short stout ones— 
those namely in which a tendon runs down the side or middle 
of the muscle, and has the fibres inserted obliquely into it. 
The muscle (< gastrocyiemius ) in the calf of the leg for instance 
(Fig. 53, B) is really a short stout muscle, for its working 
length depends on the length of its fasciculi and these are 
short and oblique, while its true cross-section is that at right 
angles to the fasciculi and is considerable. The force with 
which a muscle can shorten is very great. A frog’s muscle of 
1 square centimeter (0.39 inch) in section can just lift 2800 
grams (98.5 ounces), and a human muscle of the same area 
more than twice as much. 

Muscular Elasticity. A clear distinction must be made 
between elasticity and contractility. Elasticity is a physical 
property of matter in virtue of which various bodies tend to 
assume or retain a certain shape, and when removed from it, 
forcibly to return to it. When a spiral steel spring is stretched 
it will, if let go, “contract” in a certain sense, by virtue of its 
elasticity, but such a contraction is clearly quite different 
from a muscular contraction. The spring will only contract 
as a result of previous distortion; it cannot originate a change 
of form, while the muscle can actively contract or change its 
shape when a stimulus acts upon it, and that without being 
previously stretched. It does not merely tend to return to a 


138 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


natural shape from which it has been removed, but it assumes 
a quite new natural shape, so that physiological contractility 
b a different thing from mere physical elasticity; the essen¬ 
tial difference being that the coiled spring or a stretched band 
only gives back mechanical work which has already been spent 
on it, while the muscle originates work independently of any 
previous mechanical stretching. In addition to their contrac¬ 
tility, however, muscles are highly elastic. If a fresh muscle 
be hung up and its length measured, and then a weight be 
hung upon it, it will stretch just like a piece of india-rubher, 
and when the weight is removed, provided it has not been so 
great as to injure the muscle, the latter will return passively, 
without any stimulus or active contraction, to its original 
form. In the Body all the muscles are so attached that they 
are usually a little stretched beyond their natural resting 
length; so that when a limb is amputated the muscles divided 
in the stump shrink away considerably. By this stretched 
state of the resting elastic muscles two things are gained. In 
the first place when the muscle contracts it is already taut, 
there is no “ slack ” to be hauled in before it pulls on the 
parts attached to its tendons: and, secondly, as we have 
already seen the working power of a muscle is increased by 
the presence of some resistance to its contraction, and this is 
always provided for from the first, by having the origin and 
insertion of the muscles so far apart as to be pulling on it 
when it begins to shorten. 

The Electrical Currents of Muscle. When a muscle is 
exposed in the body or carefully removed from it and suitable 
electrodes connected with a sensitive galvanometer are applied 
to different parts of its surface, there is nearly always to be 
found evidence of a difference of electric potential between 
different parts of the muscle. These differences give rise to 
currents which are shown by the galvanometer to travel 
through the wires of the circuit from any central portion of 
the muscle to any part nearer one end, or from any part of the 
belly to a tendon. The less injured the muscle the more 
feeble are these currents, and in very fresh and very carefully 
exposed muscles they may be absent altogether. They are 
probably altogether absent from perfectly uninjured resting 
muscles, and when present in a resting muscle are due to the 
fact that any more living part of a muscle is electrically posi¬ 
tive to a more injured or dead. When a muscle is exposed 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 139 


its thinner ends die more quickly than its central parts, or 
the ends are directly injured when the muscle is cut across to 
remove it from the animal; and in that way the currents so 
usually observable arise. When all of a muscle is dead, its 
surface is isoelectric; no currents can be led off from it. 

Even a quite uninjured muscle is however, capable, of giv¬ 
ing rise to currents when it contracts, and these currents 
pass in such direction as to show that a portion of muscle 
in contraction is electronegative to a portion at rest. If a 
curarized muscle be stimulated at one point, its contraction 
commences at that point and travels from it over the remainder 
of the muscle; so that by the time a distant portion is in con¬ 
traction the part which just contracted has come to rest. By 
electrodes suitably applied it can be observed that immedi¬ 
ately after the stimulation the region of muscle close to the 
point of stimulation is electro-negative to a more distant part; 
but that afterwards, when a distant portion is in contraction 
and the stimulated region has returned to rest, the reverse is 
the case. Electrically, therefore, any contracting part of a 
muscle has to any resting part a relation similar to that of a 
dying or injured part of a muscle to an uninjured. The cur¬ 
rents which arise in consequence of the changes going on in 
contracting muscle are known as the action currents to dis¬ 
tinguish them from the resting currents due to unequal rates 
of death usually found between different parts of an exposed 
muscle in rest. 

When a muscle is stimulated through its nerve the action 
current is less easy to demonstrate, because the nerve fibres 
branch all through the muscle and stimulate all parts of it at 
once, and throw all simultaneously into contraction. The cur¬ 
rent may, however, be shown indirectly. A muscle is removed 
with its nerve attached and electrodes put on it—one, for ex¬ 
ample, on the middle of the belly and the other on the tendon, 
so as to show on the galvanometer a resting current. If the 
muscle be now made to contract by stimulating its nerve the 
current is diminished, or, as is said, shows a negative varia¬ 
tion. The cause of this is as follows: The amount of resting 
current depends on the difference between the less injured 
bellv of the muscle and the injured end; anything which 
makes these two less different electrically must diminish this 
current; and as contracted muscle is electrically like dying 
muscle, when we throw the whole into activity the previously 


140 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


existing difference is less than it was, and this the galva- 
nometer shows as the negative variation. 

Secondary Contraction. It is possible to use the action 
current of one muscle to stimulate the nerve of a second and 
produce a contraction. For this purpose two frogs’ muscles, 
A and B, are carefully dissected out with their nerves at¬ 
tached. The nerve of B is laid over A so that one part of it 
lies on the belly and another on the tendon. If the nerve 
of A be stimulated by a single induction shock, for each 
contraction of A we get a contraction of B, the negative 
variation of the muscle current of A being the stimulus for 
the nerve of B. 

Secondary Tetanus. If the nerve of A be given rapidly 
repeated stimuli so as to throw that muscle into tetanic con¬ 
traction, B is also tetanized. This is of importance, as tend¬ 
ing to show that the tetanus of A is really a compound con¬ 
traction, although to the eye or as recorded by a lever it is one 
unbroken shortening. If the electrical condition of A 
remained uniform during contraction, there should be no 
tetanus of B, but merely a simple contraction due to the set¬ 
ting up of the action current or negative variation when A 
commenced to contract, and a second due to the cessation of 
this current when A came to rest again. The tetanus of B 
must be due to rapidly repeated electrical variations in A, and 
these probably correspond to the potentially separate con¬ 
tractile changes going on in A, and fused into its apparently 
uniform tetanic contraction. 

The Source of Muscular Energy will be more fully dis¬ 
cussed in the chapter on nutrition, but a few of the main 
points may be mentioned here. A muscle where it contracts 
is able to do work by using energy set free by chemical 
changes occurring within it, as a steam-engine does work by 
using the energy set free by the chemical changes occurring 
in the combustion of its fuel; and as in the steam-engine, 
so here, the fundamental change is an oxidative one, though in 
the muscle a very indirect oxidation. A fresh frog’s muscle 
deprived of blood contains no uncombined oxygen; hung up 
in an atmosphere of pure nitrogen it can be made to contract 
and do a great deal of work before it dies and passes into 
rigor mortis. While doing this work it gives off carbon-diox¬ 
ide gas and becomes acid from the formation (probably) of 
sarcolactic acid, but there does not appear to occur any ap- 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 141 


preciable increase of oxygen-containing nitrogen compounds 
in it. As, under the conditions of the experiment, no free 
oxygen is available, the carbon dioxide must be derived from 
the breaking down of something present in the muscle; and 
as the formation of sarcolactic acid varies in amount with 
that of carbon dioxide, and both increase with the work done 
by the muscle, it would seem as if the energy set free were 
obtained by the breaking down of some highly unstable 
non-nitrogenous energy-yielding matter stored in the muscle. 
And such a view gains support from the fact that a man 
doing hard muscular work gives off per hour a great deal 
more carbon dioxide through his lungs than a man at rest, 
and does not give off any or very little more nitrogenous 
waste matter. 

But a muscle placed as above described and made to work 
passes into rigor sooner than a muscle similarly situated and 
left at rest: and this shows that work tends to favor the pro¬ 
duction of myosin, or rather of its immediate precursor myo- 
sinogen, in the muscle: so here we get some evidence that the 
nitrogenous muscle constituents are influenced and altered 
though not oxidized during work. Further, when a muscle 
passes into rigor it gives off carbon-dioxide gas, whether it 
has been worked previously or not; if so situated as to be 
deprived of all exterior sources of supply, it gives off less 
when becoming rigid after work than when becoming rigid 
without having been w r orked; but the difference is almost 
accurately accounted for by the greater quantity of carbon 
dioxide the working muscle had previously given out. This 
suggests that the chemical phenomena of rigor and of work 
are essentially alike, being merely carried to an extreme in 
the former. 

Most of the facts can be accounted for by the supposition 
that there is in living muscle a store of an unstable substance 
containing nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. For this 
hypothetic substance the name inogen has been proposed. 
During work inogen is used up and broken into a highly 
oxidized part, carbon dioxide; an oxidized body containing 
carbon and hydrogen, as sarcolactic acid (C 3 H 6 0 3 ); and a 
third body allied to myosinogen and containing all the nitro¬ 
gen and some of the oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen of the 
original inogen. In the products of this alteration stronger 
chemical affinities are satisfied than in the original compound. 


142 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


and thus energy is liberated and used by the muscle. In the 
ordinary course of events the carbon dioxide is carried off by 
blood and lymph and eliminated from the Body; the sarco- 
lactic or other similar substance or substances are also carried 
off and oxidized elsewhere to form carbon dioxide and water 
and be then eliminated; but the nitrogen-containing product 
remains behind, and with the help of fresh oxygen and of 
other food material brought by the blood is reconstructed into. 
the original inogen. In the excised muscle there is but 
scant store of material for repair; carbon dioxide is given 
off when the muscle contracts, and the sarcolactic acid and 
nitrogen-containing product accumulate: the latter then 
undergoes further changes, and ultimately becomes myosin. 
If the excised muscle be thrown into rigor quickly (as by 
heat), then the inogen is at once broken up, forming myosin 
and carbon dioxide and sarcolactic acid: if it be worked 
for a time before being thrown into rigor, then some of its 
inogen will have been already broken up, so there will be less 
to give rise to carbon dioxide at the moment of rigor, but the 
missing amount is found in that given off during work. If 
some such view as this, which may be called the “ inogen 
.theory,” be the correct one, then the energy liberated by a 
resting muscle passing into rigor must take some other form 
than muscular work. As a matter of fact a good deal of heat 
is liberated during death stiffening, but whether sufficient to 
account for all the missing energy is by no means clear. The 
whole subject of the immediate source of muscular work is 
still in much need of elucidation. 

Physiology of Plain Muscular Tissue. What has hither¬ 
to been said applies especially to the skeletal muscles; but 
in the main it is true of the unstriped muscles. These also 
are irritable and contractile, but their changes of form are 
much more slow than those of the striated fibres. Upon 
stimulation, a longer period of latent excitement elapses 
before the contraction commences and when, finally, this 
takes place it is comparatively very slow, gradually attaining 
a maximum and gradually passing away. 

Unstriped muscular tissue has a remarkable power of 
remaining in the contracted state for long periods: the mus¬ 
cular coats of many small arteries, for example, are rarely 
relaxed; sometimes they may be more contracted, sometimes 
less, but in health seldom if ever completely at rest. There 


THE PROPERTIES OF MUSCULAR TISSUE. 148 


seems to be some connection between that arrangement of 
the contractile substance which shows itself under the micro¬ 
scope as striation and the power of rapid contraction, since 
we find that the heart, which is not a skeletal or voluntary 
muscle but yet one that contracts rapidly, agrees with these 
in having its fibres striated. This connection is further illus¬ 
trated by facts of comparative anatomy: insects are, as a 
rule, rapidly moving animals, and they are characterized by 
very marked striation of nearly all their muscular tissue; 
while in the slow-moving molluscs nearly all the muscular 
tissue is unstriped except in a few, as Pecten , which make 
rapid movements, and in that genus the muscles concerned 
in producing these movements are striated. 


CHAPTER XI. 

MOTION AND LOCOMOTION. 

The Special Physiology of the Muscles. Having now 
considered separately the structure and properties in general 
of the skeleton, the joints, and the muscles, we may go on to 
consider how they all work together in the Body. Although 
the properties of muscular tissue are everywhere the same, 
the uses of different muscles are very varied, by reason of the 
different parts with which they are connected. Some are 
muscles of respiration, others of deglutition; many are known 
as flexors because they bend joints, others as extensors because 
they straighten them. The exact use of any particular mus¬ 
cle, acting alone or in concert with others, is known as its 
special physiology, as distinguished from its general physiol¬ 
ogy, or properties as a muscle without reference to its use as 
a muscle in a particular place. The functions of those mus¬ 
cles forming parts of the physiological mechanisms concerned 
in breathing and swallowing will be studied hereafter; for 
the present we may consider the muscles which co-operate in 
maintaining postures of the Body; in producing movements 
of its larger parts with reference to one another; and in pro¬ 
ducing locomotion or movement of the whole Body in space. 

In nearly all cases the striped muscles carry out their func¬ 
tions with the co-operation of the skeleton, since nearly all 
are fixed to bones at each end, and when they contract pri¬ 
marily move these, and only secondarily the soft parts attached 
to them. To this general rule there are, however, exceptions. 
The muscle for example which lifts the upper eyelid and 
opens the eye arises from bone at the back of the orbit, but 
is inserted, not into bone, but into the eyelid directly; and 
similarly other muscles arising at the back of the orbit are 
directly fixed to the eyeball in front and serve to rotate it 
on the pad of fat on which it lies. Many facial muscles again 
have no direct attachment whatever to bones, as for example 

144 


MOTION AND LOCOMOTION. 


145 


the muscle (orbicularis oris) which surrounds the mouth • 
opening, and by its contraction narrows it and purses out the 
lips; or the orbicularis 'palpebrarum which similarly sur¬ 
rounds the eyes and when it contracts closes them. 

Levers in the Body. When the muscles serve to move 
bones the latter are in nearly all cases to be regarded as levers 
whose fulcra lie at the joint where the movement takes place. 
Examples of all the three forms of levers recognized in me¬ 
chanics are found in the Human Body. 

Levers of the First Order. In this form (Fig. 63) the 
fulcrum or fixed point of support lies between the “ weight ” 


F 


P 



W. 


Fig. 63.—A lever of the first order. F, fulcrum ; P, power ; W, resistance or 

weight. 

or resistance to be overcome and the “ power ” or moving 
force, as shown in the diagram. The distance PF, from the 
power to the fulcrum, is called the “ power-arm; ” the dis¬ 
tance FW is the “ weight-arm.” When power-arm and 
weight-arm are equal, as is the case in the beam of an ordi¬ 
nary pair of scales, no mechanical advantage is gained, nor is 
there any loss or gain in the distance through which the weight 
is moved. For every inch through which P is depressed, W 
will be raised an equal distance. When the power-arm is 
longer than the other, then a smaller force at P will raise a 
larger weight at W, the gain being proportionate to the dif¬ 
ference in the lengths of the arms. For example if PF is 
twice as long as FW, then half a kilogram applied at P will 
balance a whole kilogram at W, and just more than half a 
kilogram Would lift it; but for every centimeter through 
which P descended, W would only be lifted half a centimeter. 
On the other hand when the weight-arm in a lever is longer 
than the power-arm, there is loss in force but a gain in the 
distance through which the weight is moved. 

Examples of the first form of lever are not numerous in 
the Human Body. One is afforded in the nodding move¬ 
ments of the head, the fulcrum being the articulations be¬ 
tween the skull and the atlas. When the chin is elevated 
the power is applied to the skull, behind the fulcrum, by 





146 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


small muscles passing from the vertebral column to the occi¬ 
put; the resistance is the excess in the weight of the part of 
the head in front of the fulcrum over that behind it, and is 
not great. To depress the chin as in nodding does not neces¬ 
sarily call for any muscular effort, as the head will fall for¬ 
ward of itself if the muscles keeping it erect cease to work, 
as those of us w r ho have fallen asleep during a dull discourse 
on a hot day have learnt. If the chin however be depressed 
forcibly, as in the athletic feat of suspending one’s self by 
the chin, the muscles passing from the chest to the skull in 
front of the atlanto-occipital articulation are called into play. 
Another example of the employment of the first form of lever 
in the Body is afforded by the curtsey with which a lady 
salutes another. In curtseying the trunk is bent forward at 
the hip-joints, which form the fulcrum; the weight is that of 
the trunk acting as if all concentrated at its centre of gravity, 
which lies a little above the sacrum and behind the hip-joints; 
and the power is afforded by muscles passing from the thighs 
to the front of the pelvis. 

Levers of the Second Order. In this form the weight or 
resistance is between the power and the fulcrum. The 
power-arm PF is always longer than the weight-arm WF, 
and so a comparatively weak force can overcome a consider¬ 
able resistance. But it is disadvantageous so far as regards 
rapidity and extent of movement, for it is obvious that when 
P is raised a certain distance W will be moved a less distance 
in the same time. As an example of the employment of such 
levers (Fig. 64) in the Body, we may take the act of standing 
on the toes. Here the foot represents the lever, the fulcrum 
is at the contact of its fore part with the ground ; the weight 


P 



Fig. 64.—A lever of the second order. F. fulcrum ; P, power ; W, weight. The 
arrows indicate the direction in which the forces act. 


is that of the Body acting down through the ankle-joints at 
Ta, Fig. 65; and the power is the great muscle of the calf 
acting by its tendon inserted into the heel-bone ( Ca , Fig. 65). 
Another example is afforded by holding up the thigh when 
one foot is kept raised from the ground, as in hopping on the 





MOTION AND LOCOMOTION 


147 


other. Here the fulcrum is at the hip-joint, the power is ap¬ 
plied at the knee-cap by a great muscle {rectus femoris) which 



Fig 65.—The skeleton of the foot from the outer side. Tn, surface with which 
the leg-bones articulate ; Cd . the calcaueuin into which the tendon (tnido Achillis ) 
of the calf muscle is inserted ; A/5, the metatarsal bone of the fifth digit ; N, the 
scaphoid bone ; Cl, CII, CI1I, first, second, and third cuneiform bones ; Cb, the 
cubt.id bone. 

is inserted there and arises from the pelvis; and the weight 
is that of the whole lower limb acting at its centre of gravity, 
which lies somewhere in the thigh between the hip and 
knee-joints, that is between the fulcrum and the point of ap¬ 
plication of the power. 

Levers of the Third Order. In these (Fig. 66) the power 
is between the fulcrum and the weight. In such levers the 
weight-arm is always longer than the power-arm, so the power 
works at a mechanical disadvantage, but swiftness and range 
of movement are gained. It is the lever most commonly used 
in the Human Body. For example, when the forearm is 
bent up towards the arm, the fulcrum is the elbow-joint, the 
power is applied at the insertion of the biceps muscle (Fig. 
52) into the radius and of another muscle (not represented 
in the figure, the brachialis anticus, into the ulna), and the 



Fig. 66.—A lever of the third order. F, fulcrum ; P, power; W, weight. 

weight is that of the forearm and hand, with whatever may 
be contained in the latter, acting at the centre of gravity of 
the whole somewhere on the distal side of the point of applh 







148 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


cation of the power. In the Body the power-arm is usually 
very short so as to gain speed and range of movement, the 
muscles being powerful enough to still do their work in spite 
of the mechanical disadvantage at which they are then placed. 
The limbs are thus made much more shapely than would be 
the case were the power applied near or beyond the weight. 

It is of course only rarely that simple movements as those 
described above take place. In the great majority of those 
executed several or many muscles co-operate. 

The Loss to the Muscles from the Direction of their Pull. 
It is worthy of note that, owing to the oblique direction in 
which the muscles are commonly inserted into the bones, 
much of their force is lost so far as producing movement is 
concerned. Suppose the log of wood in the diagram (Fig. 
67) to be raised by pulling on the rope in the direction a; it 
is clear at first that the rope will act at a great disadvantage; 
most of the pull transmitted by it will be exerted against the 
pivot on which the log hinges, and only a small fraction be 
available for elevating the latter. But the more the log is 
lifted, as for example into the position indicated by the dotted 
lines, the more useful will be the direction of the pull, and the 
more of it will be spent on the log and the less lost unavail- 
ingly in merely increasing the pressure at the hinge. If we 
now consider the action of the biceps (Fig. 52) in flexing the 
elbow-joint, we see similarly that the straighter the joint is, 
the more of the pull of the muscle is wasted. Beginning 



Fio. 67.—Diagram illustrating the disadvantage of an oblique pull. 

with the arm straight, it works at a great disadvantage, but 
as the forearm is raised the conditions become more and more 





MOTION AND LOCOMOTION 


149 


favorable to the muscle. Those who have practised the gym¬ 
nastic feat of raising one’s self by bending the elbows when 
hanging by the hands from a horizontal bar know practically 
that if the elbow-joints are quite straight it is very hard to 
start; and that, on the other hand, if they are kept a little 
flexed at the beginning the effort needed is much less; the 
reason being of course the more advantageous direction of 
traction by the biceps in the latter case. 

Experiment proves that the power with which a muscle 
can contract is greatest at the commencement of its short¬ 
ening, the very time at which, we have just seen, it works 
at most mechanical disadvantage; in proportion as its force 
becomes less the conditions become more favorable to it. 
There is, however, it is clear, nearly always a considerable 
loss of power in the working of the skeletal muscles, strength 
being sacrificed for variety, ease, rapidity, extent, and ele¬ 
gance of movement. 

Postures. The term posture is applied to those positions 
of equilibrium of the Body which can be maintained for some 
time, such as standing, sitting, or lying, compared with leap¬ 
ing, running, or falling. In all postures the condition of 
stability is that the vertical line drawn through the centre of 
gravity of the body shall fall within the basis of support 
afforded by objects with which it is in contact ; and the 
security of the posture is proportionate to the extent of this 
base, for the wider it is the less is the risk of the perpendicu¬ 
lar through the centre of gravity falling outside of it on slight 
displacement. 

The Erect Posture. This is pre-eminently characteristic 
of man, his whole skeleton being modified with reference to 
it. Nevertheless the power of maintaining it is only slowly 
learnt in the first years after birth, and for a long while it is 
unsafe. And though finally we learn to stand erect without 
conscious attention, the maintenance of that posture always 
requires the co-operation of many muscles, co-ordinated by 
the nervous system. The influence of the latter is shown by 
the fall which follows a severe blow on the head, which may 
nevertheless have fractured no bone nor injured any muscle: 
the concussion of the brain, as we say, “stuns” the man, 
and until its effects have passed off he cannot stand upright. 
In standing with the arms straight by the sides and the feet 
together the centre of gravity of the whole adult Body lies 


150 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


in the articulation between the sacrum and the last lumbar 
vertebra, and the perpendicular drawn from it will reach the 
ground between the two feet, within the basis of support af¬ 
forded by them. With the feet close together, however, the 
posture is not very stable, and in standing we commonly 
make it more so by slightly separating them so as to increase 
the base. The more one foot is in front 
(/ A of the other the more swaying back and 

1 ^ forward will be compatible with safety; and 

the greater the lateral distance separating 
them the greater will be the lateral sway 
which is possible without falling. Conse¬ 
quently we see that a man about to make 
great movements with the upper part of 
l his Body, as in fencing or boxing, or a sol¬ 
dier preparing for the bayonet exercise, 
always commences by thrusting one foot 
forwards obliquely, so as to increase his 
basis of support in both directions. 

The ease with which we can stand is 
largely dependent upon the way in which 
1 IV* the head is almost balanced on the top of 
the vertebral column, so that but little 
muscular effort is needed to keep it up¬ 
right. In the same way the trunk is almost 
balanced on the hip joints, but not quite, 
its centre of gravity falling rather behind 
them; so that just as some muscular effort 
is needed to keep the head from falling 
forwards, some is needed to keep the trunk 
from toppling backwards at the hips. In 
a similar manner other muscles are called 
rtfci'"bia'S “to playat other joints: as between the 
an^behind ^ui'e 'joints vertebral column and the pelvis, and at 
actLitJ keep th"'j"ints ^ uees and ankles; and thus a certain 
rigid ahd the body erect, rigidity, due to muscular effort, extends all 
along the erect Body: which, on account of the flexibility of its 
joints, could not otherwise be balanced on its feet, as a 
statue can. Beginning (Fig. 68) at the ankle-joint, we find 
it kept stiff in standing by the combined and balanced con¬ 
traction of the muscles passing from the heel to the thigh, 
and from the dorsum of the foot to the shin-bone (tibia). 


Fig. 


1 


3.—Diagram il* 









MOTION AND LOCOMOTION. 


151 


Others passing before and behind the knee-joint keep it from 
yielding; and so at the hip-joints: and others again, lying in 
the walls of the abdomen and along the vertebral column, 
keep the latter rigid and erect on the pelvis; and finally the 
skull is kept in position by muscles passing from the sternum 
and vertebral column to it, in front of and behind the occipi¬ 
tal condyles. 

Locomotion includes all the motions of the whole Body 
in space, dependent on its own muscular efforts: such as 
walking, running, leaping, and swimming. 

Walking. In walking the Body never entirely quits the 
ground, the heel of the advanced foot touching the ground in 
each step before the toe of the rear foot leaves it. The ad¬ 
vanced limb supports the Body, and the foot in the rear at 
the commencement of each step propels it. 

Suppose a man standing with his heels together to com¬ 
mence to walk, stepping out with the left foot; the whole 
Body is at first inclined forwards, the movement taking place 
mainly at the ankle-joints. By this means the centre of 
gravity would be thrown in front of the base formed by the 
feet and a fall on the face result, were not simultaneously the 
left foot slightly raised by bending the knee and then swung 
forwards, the toes just clear of the ground and, in good 
walking, the sole nearly parallel to it. When the step is 
completed the left knee is straightened and the sole placed 
on the ground, the heel touching it first, and the base of sup¬ 
port being thus widened from before back, a fall is prevented. 
Meanwhile the right leg is kept straight, but inclines for¬ 
wards above with the trunk when the latter advances, and as 
this occurs the sole gradually leaves the ground, commencing 
with the heel. When the step of the left leg is completed the 
great toe of the right alone is in contact with the support. 
With this a push is given which sends the trunk on over the 
left leg, which is now kept rigid, except at the ankle-joint; 
nnd the right knee being bent that limb swings forwards, 
its foot just clearing the ground as the left did before. The 
Body is meanwhile supported on the left foot alone, but when 
the right completes its step the knee of that leg is straight¬ 
ened and the foot thus placed, heel first, on the ground. 
Meanwhile the left foot has been gradually leaving the 
ground, and its toes only are at that moment upon it: from 
these a push is given, as before, with the right foot, and the 


152 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


knee being bent so as to raise the foot, the left leg swings for¬ 
wards at the hip-joint to make a fresh step. 

During each step the whole Body sways up and down 
and also from side to side. It is highest at the mo¬ 
ment when the advancing trunk is vertically over the 
foot supporting it, and then sinks until the moment 
when the advancing foot touches the ground, when it is 
lowest. From this moment it rises as it swings forward 
on this foot, until it is vertically over it, and then sinks 
again until the other touches the ground; and so on. At 
the same time, as its weight is alternately transferred from 
the right to the left foot and vice versa , there is a slight 
lateral sway, commonly more marked in women than in men, 
and which when excessive produces an ugly “waddling” 
gait. 

The length of each step is primarily dependent on the 
length of the legs; but can be controlled within wide limits 
by special muscular effort. In easy walking little muscular 
■work is employed to carry the rear leg forwards after it has 
given its push. When its foot is raised from the ground it 
swings on, like a pendulum; but in fast walking the muscles, 
passing in front of the hip-joint, from the pelvis to the limb, 
by their contraction forcibly carry the leg forwards. The 
easiest step, that in which there is most economy of labor, is 
that in which the limb is let swing freely, and since a short 
pendulum swings faster than a longer, the natural step of 
short-legged people is quicker than that of long-legged ones. 

In fast walking the advanced or supporting leg also aids in 
propulsion; the muscles passing in front of the ankle-joint 
contracting so as to pull the Body forwards over that foot 
and aid the push from the rear foot. Hence the fatigue and 
pain in front of the shin which is felt in prolonged, very fast 
walking. From the fact that each foot reaches the ground 
heel first, but leaves it toe last, the length of each stride is 
increased by the length of the foot. 

Running. In this mode of progression there is a moment 
in each step when both feet are off the ground, the Body 
being unsupported in the air. The toes alone come in con- 
tact with the ground at each step, and the knee-joint is not 
straight when the foot reaches the ground. When the rear 
foot is to leave the support, the knee is suddenly straight¬ 
ened, and at the same time the ankle-joint is extended so as 


MOTION AND LOCOMOTION. 


153 


to push the toes forcibly on the ground and give the whole 
Body a powerful push forwards and upwards. Immediately 
after this the knee is greatly flexed and the foot raised from 
the ground, and this occurs before the toes of the forward 
foot reach the latter. The swinging leg in each step is vio¬ 
lently pulled forwards and not suffered to swing naturally, as 
in walking. By this the rapidity of the succession of steps 
is increased, and at the same time the stride is made greater 
by the sort of one-legged leap that occurs through the jerk 
given by the straightening of the knee o£ the rear leg just 
before it leaves the ground. 

Leaping. In this mode of progression the Body is raised 
completely from the ground for a considerable period. In a 
powerful leap the ankles, knees, and liip-joints are all flexed 
as a preparatory measure, so that the Body assumes a crouch¬ 
ing attitude. The heels, next, are raised from the grpund and 
the Body balanced on the toes. The centre of gravity of the 
Body is then thrown forwards, and simultaneously the flexed 
joints are straightened, and by the resistance of the ground, 
the Body receives a propulsion forwards; much in the same 
way as a ball rebounds from a wall. The arms are at the 
same time thrown forwards. In leaping backwards, the Body 
and arms are inclined in that direction; and in jumping ver¬ 
tically there is no leaning either way and the arms are kept 
by the sides. 

Hygiene of the Muscles. The healthy working of the 
muscles needs of course a healthy state of the Body gener¬ 
ally, so that they shall be supplied with proper materials for 
growth and repair, and have their wastes rapidly and effi¬ 
ciently removed. In other words, good food and pure air are 
necessary for a vigorous muscular system, a fact which train¬ 
ers recognize in insisting upon a strict dietary, and in super¬ 
vising generally the mode of life of those who are to engage 
in athletic contests. The muscles should also not be exposed 
to any considerable continued pressure, since this interferes 
with the flow of blood and lymph through them. 

As far as the muscles themselves are directly concerned, 
exercise is the necessary condition of their best development. 
A muscle which is permanently unused degenerates and is 
absorbed, little finally being left but the connective tissue of 
the organ and a few muscle fibres filled with oil-drops. This 
is well seen in cases of paralysis dependent on injury to the 


154 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


nerves. In such cases the muscles may themselves be per* 
fectly healthy at first, but lying unused for weeks they become 
altered, and finally, when the nervous injury has been healed, 
the muscles may be found incapable of functional activity. 
The physician therefore is ofteif careful to avoid this by exer¬ 
cising the paralyzed muscles daily by means of electrical 
shocks sent through the part, while at the same time he tries 
to restore the nerves; passive exercise, as by proper massage, 
is frequently of great use in such cases. The same fact is 
illustrated by the feeble and wasted condition of the muscles 
of a limb which has been kept for some time in splints. After 
the latter have been removed it is only slowly, by judicious 
and persistent exercise, that the long-idle muscles regain 
their former size and power. The great muscles of the 
“brawny” arm of the blacksmith or wrestler illustrate the 
reverse fact, the growth of the muscles by exercise. Exer¬ 
cise, however, must be judicious; repeated frequently to the 
point of exhaustion it does harm; the period of repair is not 
sufficient to allow replacement of the parts used in work, and 
the muscles thus waste under too violent exercise as with too 
little. Rest should alternate with work, and that regularly, 
if benefit is to be obtained. Moreover, violent exercise should 
never be suddenly undertaken by one unused to it, not 
only lest the muscles suffer, but because muscular effort 
greatly increases the work of the heart, not merely because 
more blood has to be sent to the muscles themselves, but they 
produce great quantities of carbon dioxide, which must be 
carried off in the blood to the lungs for removal from the 
Body, and the heart must work harder to send the blood faster 
through the lungs, and at the same time the breathing be 
hastened so as to renew the air in those organs faster. The 
least evil result of throwing too violent work on the heart 
and lungs in this way is represented by being “ out of 
breath,” which is advantageous insomuch as it may lead to a 
cessation of the exertion. But much more serious, and 
sometimes permanent, injuries of either the circulatory or 
respiratory organs may be caused by violent and prolonged 
efforts without due previous training. No general rule can 
be laid down as to the amount of exercise to be taken; for a 
healthy man in business the minimum would perhaps be rep¬ 
resented by a daily walk of five miles. 

Varieties of Exercise. In walking and running the 


MOTION AND LOCOMOTION 


155 


muscles chiefly employed are those of the lower limbs and 
trunk. This is in part true of rowing, which when good is 
performed much more by the legs than the arms: especially 
since the introduction of sliding seats. Hence any of these 
exercises alone is apt to leave the muscles of the chest and 
arms imperfectly exercised. Indeed, no one exercise employs 
equally or proportionately all the muscles: therefore gym¬ 
nasia in which various feats of agility are practised, so as to 
call different parts into play, have very great utility. It 
should be borne in mind, h >wever, that the legs especially 
need strength; while the upper limbs,in which delicacy of 
movement, as a rule, is more desirable than power, do not re¬ 
quire so much exercise; and the fact that gymnastic exercises 
are commonly carried on indoors is a great drawback to their 
value. When the weather permits, out-of-door exercise is far 
better than that carried on in even the best ventilated and 
lighted gymnasium. For those who are so fortunate as to 
possess a garden there is no better exercise, at suitable sea¬ 
sons, than an hour’s daily digging in it; since this calls into 
play nearly all the muscles of the Body; while of games, the 
modern one of lawn tennis is perhaps the best from a hygienic 
view that has ever been invented, since it not only demands 
great muscular agility in every part of tne Body, but trains 
the hand to work w 7 ith the eye in a way that walking, run¬ 
ning, rowing, and similar pursuits do not. For the same 
reasons baseball, cricket, and boxing are excellent. 

Exercise in Infancy and Childhood. Young children 
have not only to strengthen their muscles by exercise, but 
also to learn to use them. Watch an infant trying to con¬ 
vey something to its mouth, and you will see how little 
control it has over its muscles. On the other hand, the 
healthy infant is never at rest when awake; it constantly 
throws its limbs around, grasps at all objects within its 
reach, coils itself about, and so gradually learns to exercise its 
powers. It is a good plan to leave every healthy child more 
than a few months old several times daily on a large bed, or 
even on a rug or carpeted floor, with as little covering as is 
safe, and that as loose as possible, and let it wriggle about as it 
plenses. In this way it will not only enjoy itself thoroughly, 
but gain strength and a knowledge of how to use its limbs. 
To keep a healthy child swathed all day in tight and heavy 
clothes is cruelty. 


156 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


When a little later the infant commences to crawl it is safe 
to permit it to as much as it wishes, but unwise to tempt it to 
do so when disinclined : the bones and muscles are still feeble 
and may be injured by too much work. The same is true of 
learning to walk. 

From four or five to twelve years of age almost any form 
of exercise should be permitted, or even encouraged. During 
this time, however, the epiphyses of many bones are not firmly 
united to their shafts, and so anything tending to throw too 
great a strain on the joints should be avoided. After that up 
to commencing manhood or maidenhood any kind of out¬ 
door exercise for healthy persons is good, and girls are all the 
better for being allowed to join in their brothers’ sports. 
Half of the debility and general ill-health of so many of our 
women is the consequence of deficient exercise during early 
life; and the day, which fortunately seems approaching, 
which will see dolls as unknown to or as despised by healthy 
girls as by healthy boys will see the beginning of a great im¬ 
provement in the stamina of the female portion of our popu¬ 
lation. 

Exercise in Youth should be regulated largely by sex; not 
that women are to be shut up and made pale, delicate, and 
unfit to share the duties or participate fully in the pleasures 
of life; but the other calls on the strength of the young woman 
render vigorous muscular work often unadvisable, especially 
under conditions where it is apt to be followed by a chill. 

A healthy boy or young man may do nearly anything; but 
until twenty-two or twenty-three very prolonged effort is un¬ 
advisable. The frame is still not firmly knit or as capable of 
endurance as it will subsequently become. 

Girls should be allowed to ride or play out-door games in 
moderation, and in any case should not be cribbed in tight 
stays or tight boots. A flannel dress and proper lawn tennis 
shoes are as necessary for the healthy and safe enjoyment of an 
afternoon at that game by a girl as they are for her brother in the 
baseball field. Rowing is excellent for girls if there be any 
one to teach them to do it properly with the legs and back, 
and not with the arms only, as women are so apt to row. 
Properly practised it strengthens the back and improves the 
carriage. 

Exercise in Adult Life. Up to forty a man may carry on 
safely the exercises of youth, but after that sudden efforts 


MOTION AND LOCOMOTION. 


157 


should be avoided. A lad of twenty-one or so may, if trained, 
safely run a quarter-mile race, but to a man of forty-five it 
would be dangerous, for with the rigidity of the cartilages 
and blood-vessels which begins to show itself about that time 
comes a diminished power of meeting a sudden violent de¬ 
mand. On the other hand, the man of thirty would more 
safely than the lad of nineteen or twenty undertake one of 
the long-distance walking matches which have lately been in 
vogue; the prolonged effort would be less dangerous to him, 
though a six-days’ match, with its attendant loss of sleep, 
cannot fail to be more or less dangerous to any one. Prob¬ 
ably for one engaged in active business a walk of two or 
three miles to it in the morning and back again in the after¬ 
noon is the best and most available exercise. The habit 
which Americans have everywhere acquired, of never walking' 
when they can take a street car, is certainly detrimental to, 
the general health; though the extremes of heat and cold to) 
which we are subject often render it unavoidable. 

For women during middle life the same rules apply: there 
should be some regular but not violent daily exercise. 

In Old Age the needful amount of exercise is less, and it 
is still more important to avoid sudden or violent effort. 

Exercise for Invalids. This should be regulated under 
medical advice. For feeble persons gymnastic exercises are 
especially valuable, since from their variety they permit of 
selection according to the condition of the individual; and 
their amount can be conveniently controlled. 

Training. If any person attempt some unusual exercise 
he soon finds that he loses breath, gets perhaps a “ stitch 
in the side,” and feels his heart beating with unwonted 
violence. If he persevere he will probably faint—or vomit, 
as is frequently seen in the case of imperfectly trained men at 
the end of a hard boat-race. These phenomena are avoided 
by careful gradual preparation known as “ training.” The 
immediate cause of them lies in disturbances of the circula¬ 
tory and respiratory organs, on which excessive work is 
thrown. 


CHAPTER XII. 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

Nerve-Trunks. In dissecting the Human Body numerous 
white cords are found which at first sight might be taken for 
tendons. That they are something else however soon becomes 
clear, since a great many of them have no connection with 
muscles at all, and those which have usually enter somewhere 
into the belly of the muscle, instead of being fixed to its ends 
as most tendons are. These cords are nerve-trunks: followed 
in one direction each (Fig. 69) will be found to break up into 
finer and finer branches, until the subdivisions become too 
small to be followed without the aid of a microscope. Traced 
the other way the trunk will in most cases be found to in¬ 
crease by the union of others with it, and ultimately to join 
a much larger mass of different structure, from which other 
trunks also spring. This mass is a nerve-centre. That end 
of a nerve attached to the centre is naturally its central , 
and the other its distal or peripheral end. Nerve-centres, 
then, give origin to nerve-trunks; these latter spread all over 
the Body, usually branching and becoming smaller and smaller 
as they proceed from the centre; they finally become very 
small, and how they ultimately end is not in all cases certain, 
but it is known that some have sense-organs at their termina¬ 
tions and others muscular fibres. The general arrangement 
of the larger nerve-trunks of the Body is shown in Fig. 69. 
Physically a nerve is not so tough or strong as a tendon of 
the same size; it may readily be split up into longitudinal 
strands, each of which consists of a number of microscopic 
threads, the nerve-fibres , bound together by connective tissue. 

Plexuses. Very frequently several neighboring nerve- 
trunks send off communicating branches to one another, each 
branch carrying fibres from one trunk to the other. Such 
networks are called plexuses (Fig. 72), and through the inter¬ 
changes taking place in them it often happens that the distal 

158 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 159 

branches of a nerve-trunk contain fibres which it does not 
possess as it leaves the centre to which it is connected. 



Fig. 69.—Diagram illustrating the general arran gement of the nervous system. 

Nerve-Centres. The great majority of the nerves take 
their origin from the brain and spinal cord , which together 
form the great cerebrospinal centre . Some, however, com- 



160 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


mence in rounded or oval masses which vary in size from that 
of the kernel of an almond down to microscopic dimensions, 
and which are widely distributed in the Body. Each of these 
smaller scattered centres is called a ganglion, and the whole 
of them are arranged in three sets. A considerable num¬ 
ber of the largest are united directly to one another by 
nerve-trunks, and also give off nerves to various organs, espe¬ 
cially to the blood-vessels and the viscera in the thoracic and 
abdominal cavities. These ganglia and their branches form 
the sympathetic nervous system, as distinguished from the 
cerebro-spinal nervous system consisting of the brain and 
spinal cord and the nerves springing from them. Of the re¬ 
maining ganglia some are connected with various cerebro¬ 
spinal trunks near their origin, while the rest, for the most 
part very small and connected with the peripheral branches 
of sympathetic or other nerves, are known as the sporadic 
ganglia. 

The Cerebro-Spinal Centre and its Membranes. Lying 
inside the skull is the train and in the neural canal of the 
vertebral column the spinal cord or spinal marrow , the two 
being continuous through the foramen magnum of the oc¬ 
cipital Done and forming the great cerebro-spinal nerve-centre. 
This centre is bilaterally symmetrical throughout except for 
slight differences on the surfaces of parts of the brain, which 
are often found in the higher races of mankind. Both brain 
and spinal cord are very soft and easily crushed, the con¬ 
nective tissue and a peculiar supporting tissue ( neuroglia ) 
which pervade them being delicate; accordingly both organs 
are placed in nearly completely closed bony cavities and are 
also enveloped by membranes which give them support. These 
membranes are three in number. Externally is the dura 
mater, very tough and strong and composed of white fibrous 
and elastic connective tissues. In the cranium the dura 
mater adheres by its outer surface to the inside of the skull 
chamber, serving as the periosteum of its bones; this is 
not the case in the vertebral column, where the dura mater 
forms a loose sheath around the spinal cord and is only at¬ 
tached here and there to the surrounding bones, which have 
a separate periosteum of their own. The innermost membrane 
of the cerebro-spinal centre, lying in immediate contact with 
the proper nervous parts, is the pia mater, also made up of 
white fibrous tissue interwoven with elastic fibres, but less 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


161 


D 


E 


10 


Bf 


closely than in the dura mater, so as to form a less dense and 
tough membrane. The pia mater A R 

contains many blood-vessels which 
break up in it into small branches 
before entering the nervous mass 
beneath. Covering the outside of 
the pia mater is a layer of flat closely 
fitting cells; a similar layer lines the 
inside of the dura mater, and these 
two layers are described as the third 
membrane of the cerebro-spinal cen¬ 
tre, called the arachnoid . In the 
space between the two layers of the 
arachnoid is contained a small quan¬ 
tity of watery cerebro-sjrinal liquid. 

The surface of the brain is folded 
and the pia mater follows closely these 
folds; the arachnoid often stretches 
across them: in the spaces thus left 
between it and the pia mater is con¬ 
tained some of the cerebro-spinal 
liquid. 

The Spinal Cord (Fig. 70) is 
nearly cylindrical in form, being 
however a little wider from side to 
side than dorsoventrally, and taper¬ 
ing off at its posterior end. Its 
average diameter is about 19 milli¬ 
meters (| inch) and its length 0.43 
meter (17 inches). It weighs 42.5 
grams (l£ ounces). There is no 
marked limit between the spinal cord 
and the brain, the one passing grad¬ 
ually into the other (Fig. 77), but 
the cord is arbitrarily said to com¬ 
mence opposite the outer margin of 
the foramen magnum of the occipital 
bone: from there it extends to the 
articulation between the first and ,,Su%loMj%atl pi °A. nomISe 
second lumbar vertebrae, where it “ 
narrows off to a slender filament, the different levels. 
filum terminale (cut off and represented separately at B in Fig. 


10 - 


-8 F 


9- 


B 




























162 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


70), which runs back to the end of the neural canal behind 
the sacrum. In its course the cord presents two expansions, 
an upper, 10, the cervical enlargement , reaching from the third 
cervical to the first dorsal vertebrae, and a lower or lumbar 
enlargement , 9, opposite the last dorsal vertebra. 

Kunning along the middle line on both the ventral and the 
dorsal aspects of the cord is a groove, and a cross-section shows 
that these grooves are the surface indications of fissures which 
extend deeply into the cord ((7, Fig. 71) and nearly divide it 
into right and left halves. 

The anterior fissure (1, Fig. 71) is wider and shallower 
than the posterior , 2, which indeed is hardly a true fissure, 
being completely filled up by an ingrowth of pia mater. The 
transverse section, C, shows also that the substance of the 



Fig. 71.—The spinal cord and nerve-roots. A. a small portion of the cord seen 
from the ventral side; B. the same seen laterally; C. a cross section of the cord; 
D, the two roots of a spinal nerve; 1. anterior (ventral >fissure; -j, posterior (dorsal) 
fissure; 3. surface groove along the line of attachment of the anterior nerve-roots; 
4, line of origin of the posterior roofs; 5, anterior root filaments of spinal nerve; 
6. posterior root filaments; O', ganglion of the posterior root; 7, 7', the first two 
divisions of the nerve-trunk after its formation by the union of the two roots. The 
grooves are much exaggerated 

cord is not alike throughout, but that its ivhite superficial 
layers envelop a central gray substance arranged somewhat in 
the form of a capital H. Each half of the gray matter is 
crescent-shaped, and the crescents are turned back to back and 
united across the middle line by the gray commissure. The 





ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


163 


tips of each crescent are called its horns or cornua , and the 
ventral, or anterior cornu , on each side is thicker and larger 
than the posterior. In the cervical and lumbar enlargements 
the proportion of white to gray matter is greater than else¬ 
where; and as the cord approaches the medulla oblongata its 
central gray mass becomes irregular in form and begins to 
break up into smaller portions. If lines be drawn on the 
transverse section of the cord from the tip of each horn of the 
gray matter to the nearest point of the surface, the white sub¬ 
stance in each half will be divided into three portions: one 
between the anterior fissure and the anterior cornu, and 
called the anterior white column ; one between the posterior 
fissure and the posterior cornu, and called the posterior white 
column ; while the remaining one lying in the hollow of the 
crescent and between the two horns is the lateral column : the 
anterior and lateral columns of the same side are frequently 
named the antero-lateral column. A certain amount of white 
substance crosses the middle line at the bottom of the ante¬ 
rior fissure; this forms the anterior ichite commissure. There 
is no posterior white commissure, the bottom of the posterior 
fissure being the only portion of the cord where the gray sub¬ 
stance is uncovered by white. Running along the middle 
of the gray commissure, for the whole length of the cord, is 
a tiny channel, just visible to the unaided eye; it is known as 
the central canal (canalis centralis). 

The Spinal Nerves. Thirty-one pairs of spinal nerve- 
trunks enter the neural canal of the vertebral column through 
the intervertebral foramina (p. 71). Each divides in the fora¬ 
men into a dorsal and ventral portion known respectively 
as the posterior and anterior roots of the nerve (6 and 5, Fig. 
71), and these again subdivide into finer branches which are 
attached to the sides of the cord, the posterior root at the 
point where the posterior and lateral white columns meet, 
and the anterior root at the junction of the lateral and anterior 
columns. At the lines on which the roots are attached there 
are superficial furrows on the surface of the cord. On each 
posterior root is a spinal ganglion (6', Fig. 71), placed just be¬ 
fore it joins the anterior root to make up the common nerve- 
trunk. Immediately after its formation by the mixture of 
fibres from both roots, the trunk divides (D, Fig. 71), into 
a posterior primary, an anterior primary, and a communi¬ 
cating branch. The branches of the first set go for the most 


164 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


part to the skin and muscles on the back, the second form 
a series of plexuses from which the nerves for the sides and 
ventral region of the neck and trunk and for the limbs arise; 
the communicating branches go to neighboring sympathetic 
ganglia. 

The various spinal nerves are named from the portions of 
the vertebral column through the intervertebral foramina of 
which they pass out; and as a general rule each nerve is named 
from the vertebra in front of it. For example the nerve pass¬ 
ing out between the fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae is the 
“fifth thoracic” nerve, and that between the last thoracic and 
first lumbar vertebrae, the “ twelfth thoracic.” In the cervi¬ 
cal region, however, this rule is not adhered to. The nerve 
passing out between the occipital bone and the atlas is called 
the “first cervical” nerve, that between the atlas and axis the 
second, and so on; that between seventh cervical and first 
thoracic vertebrae being the “eighth cervical” nerve. The 
thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves are then thus distributed: 8 
cervical, 12 thoracic, 5 lumbar, 5 sacral, and 1 coccygeal; the 
latter passing out between the sacrum and coccyx. Since the 
spinal cord ends opposite the upper lumbar vertebrae while 
the sacral and coccygeal nerves pass out from the neural canal 
much farther back, it is clear that the roots of those nerves, 
on their way to unite in the foramina of exit and form nerve- 
trunks, must run obliquely backwards in the spinal canal for 
a considerable distance. One finds in fact the neural canal 
in the lumbar and sacral regions, behind the point where the 
spinal cord has tapered off to form the filum terminale, oc¬ 
cupied chiefly by a great bunch of nerve-roots forming the 
so-called “horse’s tail” or cauda equina. 

Distribution of the Spinal Nerves. It would be out of 
place here to go into detail as to the exact portions of the 
Body supplied by each spinal nerve, but the following general 
statements may be made. The anterior primary branches of 
the first four cervical nerves form on each side the cervical 
plexus (Fig. 72) from which branches are supplied to the 
muscles and integument of the neck: also to the outer ear 
and the back part of the scalp. The anterior primary 
branches of the remaining cervical nerves and the first dorsal 
form the brachial plexus , from which the upper limb is 
supplied. The roots of the trunks which form this plexus 
arise from the cervical enlargement of the spinal cord. 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


165 


From the fourth and fifth cervical nerves on each side, small 
branches arise and unite to make the phrenic nerve (4', Fig. 
72) which runs down through the chest and ends in the 
diaphragm. 

The anterior primary branches of the dorsal nerves, except 
part of the first which enters the brachial plexus, form no 



plexus, but each runs along the posterior border of a rib and 
supplies branches to the chest-walls, and the lower ones to 
those of the abdomen also. 

The anterior primary branches of the four anterior lumbar 
nerves are united by branches to form the lumbar plexus . 





166 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


It supplies the lower part of the trunk, the buttocks, the 
front of the thigh, and inner side of the leg. 

The sacral plexus is formed by the anterior primary 
branches of the fifth lumbar and the first four sacral nerves, 
which unite in one great cord and so form the sciatic nerve , 
which is the largest in the Body and, running down the 
back of the thigh, ends in branches for the lower limb. The 
roots of the trunks which form the sacral plexus arise from 
the lumber enlargement of the cord. 

The Brain (Fig. 73) is far larger than the spinal cord 
and more complex in structure. It weighs on the average 



Fig 73.—Diagram illustrating the general relationships of the parts of the brain. 
A, fore-brain; b. mid-brain ; B, cerebellum; C, pons Varolii; D, medulla oblon¬ 
gata ; B, C, and D together constitute the hind-brain. 

about 1415 grams (50 ounces) in the adult male, and about 
155 grams (5.5 ounces) less in the female. In its simpler 
forms the vertebrate brain consists of three masses, each with 
subsidiary parts, following one another in series from before 
back, and known as the fore-brain, mid-brain, and hind¬ 
brain respectively. In man the fore-brain, A , weighing 
about 1245 grams (44 ounces), is much larger than all the 
rest put together and laps over them behind. It consists 
mainly of two large convoluted masses, separated from one 
another by a deep median fissure, and known as the cerebral 
hemispheres. The immense proportionate size of these is 
very characteristic of the human brain. Beneath each cere- 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


167 


bral hemisphere is an olfactory lobe, inconspicuous in man 
but in many animals larger than the cerebral hemispheres. 
Buried in the fore-brain on each side are two large gray 
masses, the corpora striata and optic thalami, The mid¬ 
brain forms a connecting isthmus between the two other 
divisions and presents on its dorsal side four hemispherical 
eminences, the corpora quadrigemina . On its ventral side 
it exhibits two semicylindrical pillars (seen under the nerve 
IV, in Fig. 77), known as the crura cerebri. The hind¬ 
brain consists of three main parts : on its dorsal side is the 
cerebellum, B (Fig. 73), consisting of a right, a left, and a 
median lobe; on the ventral side is the pons Varolii, O 
(Fig. 73), and behind that the medulla oblongata, D (Fig. 73), 
which is continuous with the spinal cord. 

In nature, the main divisions of the brain are not sepa¬ 
rated so much as has been represented in the diagram for 


Cb 



Mo 


Fra. 74.—The brain from the left side. Cb. the cerebral hemispheres forming 
the main bulk of the fore-brain; Cbl. the cerebellum; Mo. the medulla oblon¬ 
gata; P. the pons Varolii ;* the fissure of Sylvius. 

the sake of clearness, but lie close together, as represented 
in Fig. 74, only some folds of the membranes extending be¬ 
tween them ; and the mid-brain is entirely covered in on its 
dorsal aspect. Nearly everywhere the surface of the brain 
is folded, the folds, known as gyri or convolutions being 
deeper and more numerous in the brain of man than in that 
of the animals nearest allied to him; and in the human 
species more marked in the higher than in the lower races. 
It should however be added that some species of animals 


168 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


which are not markedly intelligent have much convoluted 
cerebral hemispheres. 

The brain like the spinal cord consists of gray and white 
nervous matter, but somewhat differently arranged, for while 
the brain, like the cord, contains gray matter in its interior, 
a great part of its surface is also covered with it. By the 
external convolutions of the cerebellum and the cerebral 
hemispheres the surface over which this gray substance is 
spread is very much increased (see Fig. 74). 

The Ventricles of the Brain. The minute central canal 
of the spinal cord is continued into the brain and expands 



Figs. 75.—Diagram of the right half of a vertical median section of the brain. 
H, H, convoluted inner surface of right cerebral hemisphere; 5, the fifth ventricle; 
the figure is placed on the thin inner wall of the l ight lateral ventricle; Cc, cor¬ 
pus callosum; 3, the third ventricle ; the partition separating it from the fifth ven¬ 
tricle is the fornix, and just behind the anterior thickened end of the fornix is 
shown part of the right foramen of Monro m, leading to the right lateral ven¬ 
tricle ; t, the soft commissure cut across; in the fore part of tlie fornix is the 
anterior commissure; the anterior portion of the floor of the third ventricle 
shows two downward prolongations, one directed to the optic commissure, z, the 
other < infundibulum ) to the pituitary body, pt; a, the pineal body; the thickening 
immediately beneath its root is the posterior commissure; the mass forming the 
exposed wall of the ventricle and on which the figure 3 is placed is the inner side 
of the right opt ic thalamus; o, cl, the anterior and posterior corpora quadri- 
gemina of the right side; 4, the fourth ventricle lying near the dorsal side of the 
medulla oblongata. Mo, and connected by the iter with the third ventricle; pos¬ 
teriorly it is continued to join the central canal of the spinal cord; Or, right crus 
cerebri; P, pons Varolii; Cb, cerebellum; where it is divided in the middle line 
the radial arrangement of its central white matter forming the so-called arbor 
vitce is seen; op. right optic nerve proceeding from the optic commissure ; oc, the 
third cranial nerve arising from the crus cerebri; 1, callosal convolution. 

there at several points into chambers known as the ventri¬ 
cles. Entering the medulla oblongata it approaches its 
upper surface and dilates into the fourth ventricle, 4, Fig. 75, 






















ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


169 



which has a very thin roof, lapped over by the cerebellum. 
From the front of the fourth ventricle runs a narrow pas¬ 
sage (« aqueduct of sylvius or iter) which enters another dila¬ 
tation, 3, Fig. 75, lying in the middle line near the under 
side of the fore-brain and known as the third ventricle. 
From the third ventricle two apertures (the foramens of 
Monro), one of which is partly seen at m in the diagram, 
lead into the first and second ', or lateral ventricles , one of 
which lies in each of the cerebral hemispheres. The front 
ends of these two ventricles are seen in the vertical trans¬ 
verse section of the brain represented in Fig. 76. 


Fig. 76.—A vertical section across the cerebral hemispheres taken in front of the 
fifth ventricle. Cci 2 , anterior part of corpus callosum ; VI, the anterior end of the 
right lateral ventricle: the gray mass on its exterior is the front end of the corpus 
striatum. On the left side the superficial gray matter covering the convolutions 
is shaded. 

The ventricles contain a small amount of cerebrospinal 
liquid, and are lined by epithelium which is ciliated in early 
life. Part of the posterior wall of the third ventricle is ex¬ 
tremely thin, consisting of little but this epithelium sup¬ 
ported by a thin layer of pia mater: this part is pushed in or 
doubled into the cavity of the ventricle in the form of a 
triangular membrane, the velum interpositum , which lies 
beneath the fornix and sends olfshoots into the lateral ven¬ 
tricles. Between the upper and lower layers of the indupli- 
cated velum interpositum arteries enter and there break up 
into plexuses—the choroid plexuses— covered everywhere by 






170 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the pushed-in epithelium. These plexuses occupy a consid¬ 
erable part of the third and lateral ventricles: and a pair of 
similar vascular tufts drive in before them part of the thin 
roof of the fourth ventricle and encroach on its cavity. 

Note. A frequent cause of apoplexy is a hemorrhage 
into one of the lateral ventricles; the outpoured blood accu¬ 
mulating and pressing upon the cerebral hemispheres, their 
functions are suppressed and unconsciousness produced. 
When a person is found in an apoplectic fit therefore the 
best thing to do is to leave him perfectly quiet until medical 
aid is obtained: for any movement may start afresh a bleed¬ 
ing into the ventricle which had been stopped by clots 
formed in the mouths of the torn blood-vessels. 

Sections of the Brain. Having got a general idea of the 
parts composing the brain, the best way to continue the study 
of its anatomy is to examine sections taken in various direc¬ 
tions. Two such are given in Figs. 75 and 76. Fig. 75 rep¬ 
resents the right half of a vertical section of the brain, taken 
from before back in the middle line and viewed from the 
inner side. Above, the knife has passed between the two 
cerebral hemispheres, in the longitudinal fissure, without cut¬ 
ting either, and the convoluted inner surface of the right one 
is seen. The sickle-shaped mass lower down, Cc to Cc, rep¬ 
resents the cut surface of a connecting band of white nervous 
tissue called the corpus callosum, which runs across the mid¬ 
dle line from one cerebral hemisphere to the other and puts 
them in communication. Beneath the corpus callosum 
the knife has opened a cavity, the fifth ventricle, 5, 
bounded on each side by a very thin wall, which forms part 
of the inner wall of the corresponding lateral ventricle; the 
median partition formed by these two walls and containing 
the slit-like fifth ventricle is the septum lucidum. The fifth 
is quite different in origin from the remaining cerebral ven¬ 
tricles, not being a continuation of the canalis centralis of 
the spinal cord. 

Forming the floor of the fifth ventricle and separating it 
from the third ventricle, 3, is the fornix, mainly made up of 
fibres running from before back. The anterior downward- 
curved end of the fornix is thickened, and contains the an¬ 
terior commissure, a small cord of transverse nerve-fibres. 
The cavity of the third ventricle is narrow from side to side, 
and is bounded laterally by the optic that ami, of which the 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


171 


Tight, having the figure 3 placed on it, has its median side 
-exposed in the section. The third ventricle is crossed about 
its middle by the middle commissure, t , and from its anterior 
•end the foramina of Monro, of which the right, m , is partly 
exposed in the section, lead to the lateral ventricles. From 
the fore part of the third ventricle two conical extensions pass 
downward, one directed to z, the optic commissure , from which 
the optic nerves pass, and the other, named the infundibulum, 
to the pituitary body, pt. The latter consists of an anterior 
and posterior lobe, and in the human brain contains no ner¬ 
vous elements. The anterior lobe, indeed, is an outgrowth 
from the pharynx of the embryo, and only secondarily be¬ 
comes attached to the brain. It is not known to have any 
function in existing vertebrates. From the posterior part of 
the floor of the third ventricle the iter leads as a narrow pas¬ 
sage dorsal to the crura cerebri, Cr, and ventral to the corpora 
quadrigemina, o, d, to the fourth ventricle , 4. Projecting 
from the posterior wall of the third ventricle is a small coni¬ 
cal non-nervous mass, the pineal body , which, though of no 
functional importance, is of interest, in the first place be¬ 
cause the philosopher Descartes considered it the special seat 
of the soul, and in the second because embryology and com¬ 
parative anatomy show that it is the remnant of a third 
median eye, which primitive vertebrates possessed on the 
dorsal side of the head. In some existing reptiles its original 
structure is more complete than in man, but in none is it 
functional. Just beneath the attachment of the pineal body 
is a slight thickening of the posterior wall of the third ven¬ 
tricle containing transverse fibres, and named the posterior 
commissure. The third ventricle and the parts immediately 
surrounding it constitute the inter-brain or tlialamenceplialon, 
which with the two cerebral hemispheres and the corpus cal¬ 
losum and fornix makes up the fore brain. 

The mid-brain, consisting mainly of the crura cerebri, Cr, 
and the corpora quadrigemina, o, d, and traversed by the nar¬ 
row iter, is continuous posteriorly with the hind brain, con¬ 
sisting of pons Varolii, P; cerebellum, Cb ; and medulla oblon¬ 
gata, Mo . The thin-roofed cavity of the fourth ventricle, 4, 
lies near its dorsal side. Where cut in making the section 
the cerebellum shows a curious branching core of white nerve 
matter, surrounded by gray, named arbor vitce by the old 
anatomists. The pons consists mainly of transverse fibres 


172 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


uniting the right and left halves of the cerebellum; the 
medulla oblongata and crura contain mainly longitudinal 
fibres, but there are many transverse. 

Fig. 76 represents a vertical transverse section of the brain 
taken through the forepart of the corpus callosum (Cc!) and 
altogether in front of the third ventricle. It shows the foldings 
of the cerebrum and its superficial layer of gray substance; the 
anterior ends of the lateral ventricles, VI, with a gray mass, the 
corpus striatum lying beneath and on the outer side of each. 
If the section had been taken a little farther back the optic 
thalami would have been found reaching the floor of each ven¬ 
tricle. Like the optic thalamus, to the front of and partly to 
the outer side of which it lies, the corpus striatum is mainly 
composed of gray nerve matter. It is, however, divided in 
its posterior region into an inner and outer portion by a well 
marked band of white substance, consisting of nerve fibres, 
passing through on the way to or from the surface of the 
cerebral hemispheres: this band is the internal capsule. 

The Base of the Brain and the Cranial Nerves. Twelve 
pairs of nerves leave the skull by apertures in its base, and 
are known as the cranial nerves. Most of them spring from 
the under side of the brain, and so they are best studied in 
connection with the base of that organ, which is represented 
in Fig. 77. The first pair , or olfactory nerves, spring from 
the under sides of the olfactory lobes,/, and pass out through 
the roof of the nose. They are the nerves of smell. The 
second pair, or optic nerves, II, spring from the optic thalami 
and corpora quadrigemina, and, under the name of optic tracts, 
run down to the base of the brain, where they appear passing 
around the crura cerebri, as represented in the figure. In the 
middle line the two optic tracts unite to form the optic com¬ 
missure (seen in section at z, in Fig. 75), from which an optic 
nerve proceeds to each eyeball. Behind the optic commis¬ 
sure is seen the conical stalk of the pituitary body or hy¬ 
pophysis cerebri (pt in Fig. 75), and still further back a pair of 
hemispherical masses, about the size of split peas, known as 
the corpora albicantia. 

All the remaining cranial nerves arise from the hind¬ 
brain. The third pair (motores oculi) arise from the front of 
the pons Yarolii, and are distributed to most of the muscles 
which move the eyeball and also to that which lifts the upper 
eyelid. The four-sided space bounded by the optic tracts 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


173 


and commissure in front and the third pair of nerves behind, 
and having on it the pituitary body and the corpora albi- 
cantia, lies beneath the third ventricle, so that a probe pushed 
in there would enter that cavity (see Fig. 75). 



Fig. 77.—The base of the brain. The cerebral hemispheres are seen overlap¬ 
ping all the rest. I, olfactory lobes; II, optic tract passing tothe optic commissure 
from which the optic nerves proceed; III, the third nerve or motor oculi ; 1 V, the 
fourth nerve or patheticus; V, the fifth nerve or trigeminalis; VI, the sixth nerve 
or abducens; VII, the seventh or facial nerve or portio dura: VIII, the auditory 
nerve or portio mollis; IX, the ninth or glosso-pharyngeal; X, the tenth or pneu- 
mogastric or vagus; XI, the spinal accessory; XII, the hypoglossal; ncl, the first 
cervical spinal nerve. 


The fourth pair of nerves, IV ( patlietici ), arise from the 
front part of the roof of the fourth ventricle. From there, 
each curls around a crus cerebri (the cylindrical mass seen 
beneath it in the figure, running from the pons Varolii to 
enter the under surface of the cerebral hemispheres) and ap¬ 
pears on the base of the brain. Each goes to one muscle of 
the eyeball. 

The fifth pair of nerves ( trigeminales ), F, resemble the 











174 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


spinal nerves in having two roots; one of these is much 
larger than the other and possesses a ganglion (the Gasserian 
ganglion) like the dorsal root of a spinal nerve. Beyond 
the ganglion the two roots form a common trunk which 
divides into three main branches. Of these, the ophthalmic 
is the smallest and is mainly distributed to the muscles and 
skin over the forehead and upper eyelid; but also gives 
branches to the mucous membrane lining the nose, and to 
the integument over it. The second division ( superior maxil¬ 
lary nerve) of the trigeminal gives branches to the skin over 
the temple, to the cheek between the eyebrow and the angle 
of the mouth, and to the upper teeth; as well as to the 
mucous membrane of the nose, pharynx, soft palate and roof 
of the mouth. The third division ( inferior maxillary) is the 
largest branch of the trigeminal; it receives some fibres from 
the larger root and all of the smaller. It is distributed to 
the side of the head and the external ear, the lower lip and 
lower part of the face, the mucous membrane of the mouth 
and the anterior two thirds of the tongue, the lower teeth, 
the salivary glands, and the muscles which move the lower 
jaw in mastication. 

The sixth pair of cranial nerves (Fig. 77), VI, or abdu- 
centes arise from the posterior margin of the pons Varolii, 
and each is distributed to one muscle of the eyeball. 

The seventh pair (facial nerves), VII, appear also at the 
posterior margin of the pons. They are distributed to most 
of the muscles of the face and scalp. 

The eighth pair (auditory nerves) arise close to the facial. 
They are the nerves of hearing and are distributed entirely 
to the internal ear. 

The ninth pair (glossopliaryngeals), IN’, arising close to 
the auditories, are distributed to the mucous membrane of 
the pharynx, the posterior part of the tongue, and the middle 
ear. 

The tenth pair (pneumogastric nerves or vagi), X, arise 
from the sides of the medulla oblongata. Each gives branches 
to the pharynx, gullet and stomach, the larynx, windpipe 
and lungs, and to the heart. The vagus runs farther through 
the body than any other cranial nerve. 

The eleventh pair (spinal accessory nerves), XI, do not 
arise mainly from the brain but by a number of roots attached 
to the lateral columns of the cervical portion of the spinal 


ANATOMY OF THE NEUVOUS SYSTEM. 


175 


cord, between the anterior and posterior roots of the proper 
cervical spinal nerves. Each, however, runs into the skull 
cavity alongside of the spinal cord and, getting a few fila¬ 
ments from the medulla oblongata, passes out along with the 
glossopharyngeal and pneumogastric nerves. Outside the 
skull it divides into two branches, one of which joins the 
pneumogastric trunk, while the other is distributed to mus¬ 
cles about the shoulder. 

The twelfth pair of cranial nerves ( hypoglossi ), XII, arise 
from the sides of the medulla oblongata; they are distributed 
mainly to the muscles of the tongue and hyoid bone. 

Deep Origins of the Cranial Nerves. The places referred 
to above, at which the various cranial nerves appear on the 
surface of the brain, are known as their superficial origins. 
From them the nerves can be traced for a lesser or greater way 
in the substance of the brain until each is followed to one or 
more masses of gray matter, which constitute its proper start¬ 
ing-point and are known as its deep origin. The deep origins 
of all except the first and second and part of the eleventh lie 
in the medulla oblongata, midbrain, and thalamen cephalon. 

The Ganglia and Communications of the Cranial Nerves. 
Besides the Gasserian ganglion above referred to, many others 
are found in connection with the cranial nerves. Thus for 
example there is one on each of the main divisions of the 
trigeminal, two are found on each pneumogastric and two in 
connection with the glossopharyngeal. At these ganglia and 
elsewhere, the various nerves often receive branches from 
neighboring cranial or spinal nerves, so that very soon after 
it leaves the brain hardly any, except the olfactory, optic, and 
auditory, remains free from fibres derived from other trunks. 
This often makes it difficult to say from where the nerve3 of 
a special part have come; for example, the nerve-fibres going 
to the submaxillary salivary gland from the trigeminal leave 
the brain first in the facial and only afterwards enter the 
fifth; and many of the fibres going apparently from the 
pneumogastric to the heart come originally from the spinal 
accessory. 

The Sympathetic System. The ganglia which form the 
main centres of the sympathetic nervous system lie in two 
rows (s, Fig. 2, and sy, Fig. 3), one on either side of the 
bodies of the vertebrae. Each ganglion is united by a nerve- 
trunk with the one in front of it, and so two great chains are 


176 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


formed reaching from the base of the skull to the coccyx* 
In the trunk region these chains lie in the ventral cavity, 
their relative position in which is indicated by the dots sy in 
the diagrammatic transverse section represented on p. 6 in 
Fig. 3. The ganglia on these chains are forty-nine in num¬ 
ber, viz., twenty-four pairs, and a single one in front of the 
coccyx in which both chains terminate. They are named 
from the regions of the vertebral column near which they lie; 
there being three cervical, twelve thoracic, four lumbar, and 
five sacral pairs. 

Each sympathetic ganglion is united by communicating 
branches with the neighboring spinal nerves, and near the 
skull with various cranial nerves also; while from the gan¬ 
glia and their uniting cords arise numerous trunks, many of 
which, in the thoracic and abdominal cavities, form plexuses, 
from which in turn nerves are given off to the viscera. 
These plexuses frequently possess numerous ganglia of their 
own; two of the most important are the cardiac plexus 
which lies on the dorsal side of the heart, and the solar plexus 
which lies in the abdominal cavity and supplies nerves to the 
stomach, liver, kidneys, and intestines. Many of the sympa¬ 
thetic nerves finally end in the walls of the blood-vessels of 
various organs. To the naked eye they are commonly grayer 
in color than the cerebro-spinal nerves. 

The Sporadic Ganglia. These are found scattered in 
nearly all parts of the Body except the limbs. They are for 
the most part small, even microscopic in size, though several 
large ones exist in the abdominal cavity. They are especially 
abundant in the neighborhood of secretory tissues and about 
blood-vessels, while a very important set is found in the 
heart. Nerves unite them with the cerebro-spinal and sym¬ 
pathetic centres, and probably most of them should be classi¬ 
fied as belonging to the sympathetic systen). 

The Histology of Nerve-Fibres. The microscope shows 
that in addition to connective tissue and other accessory 
parts, such as blood-vessels, the nervous organs contain tis¬ 
sues peculiar to themselves and known as nerve-fibres and 
nerve-cells. The cells are found in the centres only; while 
the fibres, of which there are two main varieties known as 
the white and the gray , are found in both trunks and cen¬ 
tres; the white variety predominating in most cerebro-spinal 
nerves and in the white substance of the centres, and the 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


177 


gray in the sympathetic trunks and the gray portions of the 
central organs. 

If an ordinary cerebro-spinal nerve-trunk be examined it 
will be found to be enveloped in a loose sheath of areolar 
connective tissue, which forms a packing for it and unites 
it to neighboring parts. From this sheath, or perineurium , 
bands of connective tissue penetrate the nerve and divide it 
up into a number of smaller cords or funiculi, much as a 
muscle is subdivided into fasciculi; each funiculus has a 
sheath of its own called the neurilemma, composed of several 



Fig. 78. Fig. 79. 

Fig. 78.—White nerve-fibres soon after removal from the Body and when they 
have acquired their double contour. 

Fig. 79.—Diagram illustrating the structure of a white or medullated nerve-fibre. 
1, 1, primitive sheath; 2, 2, medullary sheath; 3, axis cylinder. 


concentric layers of a delicate membrane, within which the 
true nerve-fibres lie. These, which would be nearly all of 
the white kind, consist of extremely delicate threads, on the 
average, 0.0125 mm. ( g o * 00 - inch) in diameter, though often 
considerably smaller, and of a length which is in proportion 
very great. The core of each nerve-fibre in fact is continuous 
from a nerve-centre to the organ in which it ends, so that the 
fibres, e.g., which pass out through the sacral plexus and then 
run on through the sciatic nerve and its branches to the skin 



















178 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


flCr) 


of the toes, are three to four feet long. If a fresh white nerve * 
fibre be examined with the microscope it presents the appear¬ 
ance of a perfectly homogeneous glassy thread; but soon it 
acquires a characteristic double contour (Fig. 
78) from the coagulation of a portion of its 
substance. By proper treatment with re¬ 
agents three layers may be brought into view. 
Outside is a fine transparent envelope (I, 
Fig. 79) called the primitive sheath ; inside 
this is a fatty substance, 2, forming the 
medullary sheath (the coagulation of which 
gives the fibre its double border), and in the 
centre is a core, the axis cylinder , 3, which 
is longitudinally fibrillated and is clearly the 
essential part of the fibre, since near the end¬ 
ing the primitive and medullary sheaths are 
frequently absent. At intervals of about 
one millimeter ( ¥ ^ inch) along' the fibre are 
found nuclei {c, Fig. 80), around each of 
which lies a little protoplasm. These are 
indications of the primitive cells which have 
elongated and formed an envelope for the 
axis cylinder, which itself is a branch given 
off by a nerve-cell in some centre. The 
medullary sheath is interrupted half-way 
between each pair of nuclei at a point called 
the node of Ranvier ( R , Fig. 80), which is 
the boundary between two of the enveloping 
cells. In the course of a nerve-trunk its 
fibres rarely divide; when a branch is given 
onwo Sii~ e or r mTd- off some fibres merely separate from the 
maCTffledmorfthfn rest . much as a skeil1 of silk mi g ht be se P a - 
tors- they have 1 been ra ^ e d out at one end into smaller bundles 
treated . wtth, osmic containing fewer threads. Near their ends, 

acid, which stains the » 7 

medullary sheath however, nerve-fibres frequently branch, and 

black and brings in- . . . 1 . \ 

to view the nuclei, then a division of the axis cylinder goes to 

c, c, and nodes of . . , 

Ranvier. R. The axis each branch. 

cylinder is seen to be o » 

continuous through Gray Nerve-Fibres. Some of these are 
merely white fibres which near their peri¬ 
pheral ends have lost .their medullary sheaths; others have no 
medullary sheath throughout their whole course, and consist 
merely of an axis cylinder (often striated) and nuclei, with 












ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


179 


or without a primitive sheath. Such fibres are especially 
abundant in the sympathetic trunks; and they alone form 
the olfactory nerve. In the communicating branches between 
the sympathetic ganglia and the spinal nerves both white 
and gray fibres are found; the former are cerebro-spinal 
fibres passing into the sympathetic system, while the gray 
fibres originate in the sympathetic system and pass to the 
membranes and blood-vessels of the spinal cord and spinal 
column. Another group of gray nerve-fibres may be called 
nerve-fibrils: they are extremely fine, and result from the 
subdivision of axis cylinders, close to their final endings in 
many parts of the Body, after they have already lost both 
primitive and medullary sheaths. Many fine gray fibres exist 
in the nerve-centres. 

The Histology of Nerve-Cells. The only structures 
known with certainty to be connected with the central ends 
of nerve-fibres are nerve-cells , and so many nerve-fibres have 



Fig 81 —Nerve-cell from anterior horn of grey matter of spinal cord; a, axis- 
cylinder process. 2, Cell from posterior horn of spinal cord. 


been traced into continuity with nerve-cells, that it is fairly 
certain all arise in this way. The latter may therefore be re¬ 
garded as the central organs of the nerve-fibres. 


180 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


At 1, Fig. 81, is shown a typical nerve-cell such as may 
be found in an anterior horn of the gray matter of the spinal 
cord. It consists of the cell body , or cell protoplasm, in 
which is a large nucleus containing a nucleolus . From the 
body of the cell arise several branches, the great majority of 
which are granular and divide frequently in a forking or 
“dichotomous” manner. These are known as the “proto¬ 
plasmic ” branches of the cell, and possibly serve merely to 
absorb nourishment for it. One branch, however, a , gives off 
at right angles smaller filaments, but still maintains its in¬ 
dividuality and ultimately becomes the axis cylinder of a 
nerve-fibre. Its side branches probably put it in anatomical 
continuity with other nerve-fibres, and other nerve-cells. 
Nerve cells from the posterior horn of the grey matter of 
the spinal cord (2, Fig. 81) also possess numerous granular 
protoplasmic processes and a nerve-fibre process (b); but the 
latter, instead of continuing directly into an axis cylinder, 
breaks up into a network of fine branches which frequently 
unite with one another and also, no doubt, with fibrils from 
neighboring cells. It is almost certain that one or more of 
these fibrils or a bunch of them forms the axis cylinder of a ‘ 
fibre in a dorsal root of a spinal nerve. 

As we shall learn later, the dorsal roots are concerned in 
carrying impulses from the skin and other sensitive parts to 
the spinal cord; the anterior roots in conveying impulses from 
the nerve-centres to the organs (muscles, glands, etc.) of the 
Body. Therefore, in general terms, we may speak of the type 
of nerve-cell 1, Fig. 81, as a motor nerve-cell; and the type 
of cell 2, Fig. 81, as a sensory nerve-cell. Both varieties of 
cells are found abundantly in the gray matter of the brain 
(Fig. 83), along with other forms, of which the pear-shaped 
cells of PurJcinje existing in the cerebellum may be mentioned 
(Fig. 82). 

In the sympathetic and sporadic ganglia somewhat simpler 
forms of nerve-cells, having fewer branches, occur. As a rule 
nerve-cells are comparatively large and have conspicuous 
nuclei, but in the brain many small ones exist. 

Neuroglia. In the brain and spinal cord the true nervous 
elements are intertwined with and supported by connective 
tissue and minute blood-vessels, but in addition there is found 
closely twisted around the cells and fibres a peculiar tissue 


ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


181 


made of greatly branched cells (Fig. 83), and named the 
neuroglia or sustentacular tissue. 


Nerve-Centres consist of 
nerve-cells, of neuroglia, and 
of connective tissue and 
blood-vessels arranged in 
different ways in the differ¬ 
ent centres. They are es¬ 
sentially collections of nerve- 



white and gray nerve-fibres, of 



Fig. 82.—A thin section of the cere- Fig. 83.—Cells from the surface gray mat- 
toellum showing: pear-shaped cells of ter of a cerebral convolution : p, nerve-cells 
Purkinje. and numerous other small with axis cylinder processes, o ; n, non-ner- 
nerve-cells. vous neuroglia cells. The method of prepa¬ 

ration (Golgi’s) stains the cells an uniform 
black. 


cells and nerve-fibres, some of the latter being connected with 
the cells, while others may merely pass through on their way 
to or from other centres. As an illustration of the structure 
of a more complex nerve-centre we may study the spinal cord. 

Histology of the Spinal Cord. If a thin transverse sec¬ 
tion of the spinal cord be examined with a microscope it will 
be found that enveloping the whole is a delicate layer of 
connective tissue, the pin mater . Fine bands of it ramify 






























182 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


through the cord, supporting the nervous elements; some of 
the coarser of these are represented at 6, 7, and elsewhere in 
Fig. 84, but from these still finer processes arise, as represented 
at d and e in Fig. 85. The ultimate finest tissue directly 
supporting the nervous elements directly, is the neuroglia. 
In the white columns, the cord (Fig. 85) will be seen to be- 



*<’ig. 84.—A thin transverse section of half of the spinal cord magnified about 
10 diameters. 1, anterior fissure ; '4, posterior fissure ; 3. cannlis centralis : 8, pia 
mater enveloping the cord ; 6, 7, bands of pia mater penetrating the cord and sup¬ 
porting its nerve elements ; 9, a posterior root ; 10, bundles of an anterior root; a, 
b , c, cl, e, groups of nerve-cells in the gray matter. 

mainly made up of medullated nerve-fibres which run longi¬ 
tudinally and therefore appear in the transverse section as 
circles, with a dot in the centre, which is the axis cylinder. 
At b in Fig. 85 these fibres are represented, the intermediate 
connective tissue being omitted, while at e this latter alone is 
represented in order to show more clearly its arrangement. 
At the levels of the nerve-roots horizontal white fibres are 
found (9 and 10, Fig. 84, and a , Fig. 85), running into the 
gray matter, and others exist at the bottom of the anterior 
fissure, running from one side of the cord to the other. In 












ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


183 


the gray substance the same supporting network of connec¬ 
tive tissue is found, but in it the majority of the nerve-fibres 
are non-medullated, and at certain points nerve-cells, such as 
are totally absent in the white substance, are found. One 
collection of these nerve-cells is seen at c in Fig. 84, and 
others are represented at a. e, f, and elsewhere. The nerve- 
fibres in the gray matter are for the most part branches of 
the axis cylinder processes of these cells (see Fig. 81), and as 
they unite with one another freely they form a structurally 
continuous network through the whole gray substance. The 
fibres of the anterior roots of the spinal nerves enter the gray 
matter and there most of them soon become continuous with 
the axis cylinder process of a nerve-cell; the ending of the 
posterior root-fibres is not quite certain, but they appear to 
break up and join the gray network, to be by it placed indi¬ 
rectly in connection with nerve-cells. In any case the funda¬ 
mental fact remains that every nerve-fibre joining the spinal 
•cord is directly or indirectly in continuity with the gray net¬ 
work, and so with all the other fibres of all the spinal nerves. 



Fig. 85.—A small bit of the section represented in Fig, 84 more magnified, a, a 
bundle of fibres from an anterior root passing through the white substance on its 
way to the gray. Towards the right of the figure the nerve-fibres of the anterior 
column have been omitted so as to render more conspicuous the supporting con¬ 
nective tissue, d and e. Elsewhere the nerve-fibres alone are represented.; c, envel¬ 
oping pia mater. The neuroglia is not indicated. 

From the sides of the gray substance, fibres continually pass 
out into the white portion and become medullated; some of 
these enter the gray network again at another level and so 
bring parts of the cord into especially close union, while 
others pass on into the brain. At the top of the neck, more¬ 
over, the gray matter of the cord is continuous with that of 













184 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the medulla oblongata and through it with the rest of the 
brain, so that nervous disturbances can pass by anatomically 
continuous paths from one to the other. 


The Structure of a Spinal Ganglion. When one of these 
ganglia is cut lengthwise, and the section examined micro- 



contain a large nucleus and nucleolus, and average njm. 

inch) in long diameter. Near its narrow end the cell 
substance is fibrillated, and a bundle of these fine fibres, ac, 
passes from it, something like the stalk from a pear. This 
stalk is an axis cylinder, and has on it small nuclei. A little 
w T ay from the cell the axis cylinder acquires a primitive sheath, 
ps, and a little farther on a medullary sheath, ?ns, so that it 
becomes a fully formed white nerve-fibre. At a node of Ran- 
vier (usually that one nearest the cell), nr, this divides, its 
branches diverging from it at right angles: one branch runs 
to the posterior root and enters the spinal cord; the other 
continues through the ganglion as a fibre of the mixed 
nerve-trunk. The axis cylinders of these branches, c and d, 
in some cases at least, contain fibrillae not derived from the 
pear-shaped cell in addition to those which are. Each cell as 
it lies in the ganglion is encased in a delicate envelope of 








ANATOMY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


185 


flattened nucleated cells (not indicated in tlie figure), 
probably belonging to the surrounding connective tissue. 
Blood-vessels are distributed in the ganglion, the capillaries 
being especially numerous about the nerve-cells. 

Most of the cells of sympathetic and other peripheral gan¬ 
glia seem to have several branches, no one of which differs 
essentially from the rest; probably each branch becomes part 
of the axis cylinder of a different fibre, the cell thus placing 
several distinct fibres in communication. 


186 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

The Properties of the Nervous System. General Con¬ 
siderations. If the finger of any one unexpectedly touches 
a very hot object, pain is felt and the hand is suddenly 
snatched away; that is to say, sensation is aroused and cer¬ 
tain muscles are caused to contract. If, however, the nerves 
passing from the arm to the spinal cord have been divided, or 
if they have been rendered incapable of activity by disease, no 
such results follow. Pain is not then felt on touching the 
hot body nor does any movement of the limb occur; even 
more, under such circumstances the strongest effort of the 
will of the individual is unable to bring about movement 
of his hand. If, again, the nerves of the limb have uninjured 
connection with the spinal cord, but parts of the latter, 
higher up, between the brain and the point of junction of the 
nerves of the brachial plexus with the cord, are injured, then 
a sudden contact with the hot body will cause the arm to be 
snatched away, but no pain or other sensation due to the 
contact will be felt, nor can the will act upon the muscles of 
the arm. From the comparison of what happens in such 
cases (which have been observed over and over again upon 
wounded or diseased persons) with what occurs in the natural 
condition of things, several important conclusions may be 
arrived at: 

1. The feeling of pain does not reside in the burnt part it¬ 
self; although that may be perfectly normal, no sensation 
will be aroused by any external force acting upon it, if the 
nervous cords uniting it with the centres be previously 
divided. 

2. The hot body has originated some change which , ivhen 
propagated along the nerve-trunks , has excited a condition of 
the nerve-centres which is accompanied by a sensation , in this 
particular case a painful one. This is clear from the fact 
that the loss of sensation immediately follows division of the 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 187 


nerves of the limb, but not the injury of any of its other 
parts; unless of such a character as to cut off the supply of 
blood, when of course the nerves soon die, with the rest. 
Even, however, some time after tying the vessels which carry 
blood to a limb one can observe in experiments upon the 
lower animals that sensibility is still retained if the nerves 
be not directly injured. 

3. When a nerve in the skin is excited by a burn, or other¬ 
wise, it does not directly call forth muscular contractions; for 
if so, touching the hot body would cause the limb to be moved 
oven when the nerve had been divided high up in the arm, and 
as a matter of observation and experiment we find that no such 
result follows if the nerve-fibres have been cut in any part of 
their course from the burned part to the spinal marrow. It 
is therefore through the nerve-centres that the change trans¬ 
mitted from the excited part of the skin is reflected or sent 
back, to act upon the muscles. 

4. The last deduction makes it probable that nerve-fib?es 
must pass from the centre to muscles as well as from the skin 
to the centre. This is confirmed by the fact that if the nerves 
of the limb be divided the will is unable to act upon its 
muscles, showing that these are excited to contract through 
the nerves. That the nerve-fibres concerned in arousing 
sensation and muscular contractions are different, is shown 
also by cases of disease in which the sensibility of the limb is 
lost while the power of voluntarily moving it remains, and by 
other cases in which the reverse is seen, objects touching the 
hand being felt while it cannot be moved by the will. We con¬ 
clude then that certain nerve-fibres when stimulated convey 
something (n nervous impulse) to the centres, and that these 
when excited may radiate impulses through other nerve-fibres 
to distant parts, the centre serving as a connecting link be¬ 
tween the fibres which carry impulses from without in, and 
those which convey them from within out. 

5. Further we conclude that the spinal cord can act as 
an intermediary betiveen the fibres carrying-in nervous im¬ 
pulses and those carrying them out, but that sensations can¬ 
not be aroused by impulses reaching the spinal cord only, 
nor has the Will its seat there; volition and consciousness are 
dependent upon states of the brain. This follows from the 
unconscious movements of the limbs which follow stimula¬ 
tion of its skin after such injury to the spinal cord as pre- 


188 ' 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


vents the further transmission of nervous impulses (show¬ 
ing that the cord is a reflex centre ), and from the absence, in 
such cases, of sensation in the part whose nerves have been 
injured, and the loss of the power of voluntarily causing its 
muscles to contract. 

6. Finally we conclude that the spinal cord in addition to 
being a centre for reflex actions serves to transmit nervous im¬ 
pulses to and from the brain; a fact which is confirmed by the 
histological observation that in addition to the nerve-cells, 
which are the characteristic constituents of nerve-centres, it 
contains the simply conductive nerve-fibres, many of which 
pass on to the brain. In other words, the spinal cord, besides 
containing fibres which enter it from and pass from it to peri¬ 
pheral parts,contains many which unite it to other centres; 
and others which connect the various centres in it, as those 
for the arms and legs, together. This is true not only of the 
spinal cord, but of the brain (which contains many fibres 
uniting different centres in it), and probably of all nerve- 
centres. 

The Functions of Nerve-Centres and Nerve-Trunks. 

From what has been stated in the previous paragraphs it is 
clear that we may distinctly separate the nerve-trunks from 
the nerve-centres. The fibres serve simply to convey impulses 
either from without to a centre or in the opposite direction, 
while the centres conduct and do much more. Some, as the 
.spinal cord, are merely ref ex centres and have nothing to do 
with states of consciousness. A man with his spinal cord 
cut or diseased in the thoracic region will kick violently if the 
soles of his feet be tickled, but will feel nothing of the tick¬ 
ling, and if he did not see his legs would not know that they 
were moving. Reflex centres moreover do not act, as a rule, 
indifferently and casually, but rearrange the impulses reach¬ 
ing them, so as to produce a protective or in some way advan¬ 
tageous result. In other words, these centres, acting in 
health, commonly co-ordinate the incoming impulses and give 
rise to outward-going impulses which produce an apparently 
purposive result. The burnt hand or the tickled foot, in the 
absence of all consciousness, is snatched away from the irri¬ 
tant; and food chewed in the mouth excites nerves there 
which act on a centre which causes certain cells in the salivary 
glands to make and pour into the mouth more saliva. In 
addition to the reflex centres we have others, placed in the 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 189 

brain, the excitation of which is accompanied in us by various 
states of consciousness, as sensations, emotions, and the will; 
concerning these centres of consciousness our physiological 
knowledge is still very incomplete; what we know about them 
is based rather on psychological than physiological observa¬ 
tion. The brain also contains a great many important reflex 
centres, as that for the muscles of swallowing, an act which 
goes on perfectly without our consciousness at all. In fact 
if we pay attention to our swallowing we fail to perform it as 
well as if we let the nervo-muscular apparatus alone, as is 
illustrated by the difficulty many persons experience on trying 
to swallow a pill. To complete the statement of the functions 
of the nerve-centres we must probably add two other groups. 
The first of these is that of the automatic centres , which are 
centres excited not directly by nerve-fibres conveying impulses 
to them, but in other ways. For example the breathing 
movements go on independently of our consciousness, being 
dependent on stimulation of a nerve-centre in the brain by 
the blood which flows through it (see Chap. XXVII); and 
the beat of the heart is also much dependent (Chap. XVIII) 
upon nerve-centres, the excitant of which is unknown. The 
final group of nerve-centres is represented by certain sporadic 
sympathetic and cerebro-spinal ganglia which are not known 
to be either reflex, automatic, or conscious in function. They 
may be called relay and junction centres , since in them prob¬ 
ably an impulse entering by one nerve-fibre excites a cell, 
which by its communicating branches arouses many others, 
and these then send out impulses by the many nerve-fibres 
connected with them. By such means a single nerve-fibre can 
act upon an extended region of the Body. In other cases it 
seems likely that a feeble nervous impulse reaching an irri¬ 
table nerve-cell excites changes in this comparable to those 
produced in a muscle when it is stimulated; the cell is in 
fact a store of readily decomposable material which breaks 
down when stimulated through one branch, with the liberation 
of energy, the discharge of which takes the form of reinforced 
nerve impulses sent along other branches or one of them. 

That nerve-cells are the seats of considerable metabolic 
changes is indicated by the abundant supply of blood always 
sent to regions where they are numerous: and that some of 
their material is used up, or undergoes katabolism, during 
their activity and is replaced by anabolic processes during 


190 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


rest, can be demonstrated histologically. If the sensory 
nerves of one fore limb of an animal be left at rest and those 
of the other simultaneously excited for several hours, it will 
be found, at the end of that time, that the nuclei of many 
cells of the spinal ganglia of the brachial nerves on the stim¬ 
ulated side are shrunken and distorted when compared with 
those of the other side. But if some hours be suffered to 
elapse before the animal is killed and the ganglia examined, 
the nuclei of the cells on both sides will be found equally 
large and well rounded. In carrier-pigeons after a long flight 
and in wild sparrows shot at the close of day, the nuclei of 
the nerve-cells connected with the origin of motor nerve-fibres 
are found to be shrivelled, and the whole cell frequently dimin¬ 
ished in size when compared with specimens taken from birds 
after a period of rest. In old age the nuclei of many nerve- 
cells are small and distorted, even after prolonged rest. 

Nerve-trunks and the white portions of nerve-centres are 
sparsely supplied with blood and undergo but small and slow 
nutritive changes in health. Their activity appears to consist 
in the transmission of some molecular motion not affecting 
the nutrition and chemical composition of the fibre, and not 
using up its material. 

Excitant and Inhibitory Nerves. The great majority 
of the nerve-fibres of the Body when they convey nervous 
impulses to a part arouse it to activity; they are excitant 
fibres. There is, however, in the Body another very impor¬ 
tant set which arrest the activity of parts and which are 
known as inhibitory nerve-fibres. Some of these check the 
action of central nervous organs, and others the work of 
peripheral parts. For instance, taking a pinch of snuff will 
make most persons sneeze; it excites centrally acting fibres 
in the nose, these excite a centre in the brain, and this in 
turn sends out impulses by motor fibres which cause various 
muscles to contract. But if the skin of the upper lip be 
pinched immediately after taking the snuff, in most cases the 
reflex act of sneezing, which the Will alone could not pre¬ 
vent, will not take place. The afferent impulses conveyed 
from the skin of the lip have “ inhibited ” what we may call 
the “sneezing centre;” and afford us therefore an example 
of inhibitory fibres checking a centre. On the other hand, 
the heart is a muscular organ which goes on beating steadily 
throughout life; but if certain branches of the pneumogastric 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 191 

nerve going to it be excited, the beat of the heart will be 
stopped; it will cease to work and lie in a relaxed resting 
condition: in this we have an instance of an inhibitory nerve 
checking the activity of a peripheral organ. 

Classification of Nerve-Fibres. Nearly all the nerve- 
fibres of the Body fall into one of two great groups corre¬ 
sponding to those which carry impulses to the centres and 
those which carry them out from the centres. The former 
are called afferent or centripetal fibres, and the latter efferent 
or centrifugal. Since the impulses reaching the centres 
through the afferent fibres frequently cause sensations they are 
often called sensory fibres ; and as many of those which carry 
out impulses from the centres excite movements, they are 
frequently called motor fibres; but these last names are bad, 
since even excluding inhibitory nerves, many afferent fibres 
are not sensory and many efferent are not motor. 

We may distinguish as subdivisions of afferent fibres the 
following groups. 1 . Sensory fibres proper, the excitement 
of which is followed by a sensation when they are connected 
with their brain-centre, which sensation may or may not give 
rise to a voluntary movement. 2. Reflex fibres, the excitation 
of which may be attended with consciousness but gives rise 
to involuntary efferent impulses. Thus for example light 
falling on the eye causes not only a sensation, but also a nar¬ 
rowing of the pupil, which is entirely independent of the 
control of the will. No absolute line can, however, be drawn 
between these fibres and those of the last group: any sudden 
excitation, as an unexpected noise, will cause an involuntary 
movement, while the same sound if expected would cause a 
movement or not according as was willed. 3. Excito-motor 
fibres. The excitation of these when reaching a nerve-centre 
causes the stimulation of efferent fibres, but without the par¬ 
ticipation of consciousness. During fasting, for instance, bile 
accumulates in the gall-bladder and remains there until some 
semi-digested food passes from the stomach into the intestine. 
This is acid and stimulates nerves in the mucous membrane 
lining the intestine, and these convey an impulse to a centre, 
which in consequence sends out impulses to the muscular coat 
of the gall-bladder causing it to contract and expel its con¬ 
tents into the intestine: but of all this we are entirely un¬ 
conscious. 4. Centro-inhibitory fibres. Whether these exist 
as a distinct class is at present doubtful. It may be that 


192 


TEE HUMAN BODY. 


they are only ordinary sensory or reflex fibres, and that the 
inhibition is due only to the interference of two impulses 
reaching a central organ at the same time and impeding or 
hindering the full production of the normal result of either. 

In efferent nerve-fibres physiologists also distinguish sev¬ 
eral groups. 1. Motor fibres , which are distributed to the 
muscles and govern their contractions. 2. Vaso-motor fibres. 
These are not logically separable from other motor fibres; 
but they are distributed to the muscles of the blood-vessels, 
and by governing the blood-supply of various parts, indirectly 
produce such secondary results as entirely overshadow their 
primary effect as merely producing muscular contractions. 
3. Secretory fibres. These are distributed to the cells of the 
Body which form various liquids used in it, as the saliva and 
the gastric juice, and arouse them to activity. The salivary 
glands, for instance, may be made to form saliva by stimulat¬ 
ing nerves going to them, and the same is true of the cells 
which form the sweat poured out upon the surface of the 
Body. 4. Trophic nerve-fibres. Under this head are included 
nerve-fibres which have been supposed to govern the nutri¬ 
tion of the various tissues, and so to control their healthy 
life. It has been doubted if any such nerve-fibres exist as a 
distinct class, and no doubt many of the facts which have been 
cited to prove their existence are otherwise explicable. For 
instance, shingles is a disease characterized by an eruption on 
the skin along the line of certain nerves, oftenest those which 
run between the ribs; but it may be dependent upon disease 
of the vaso-motor nerves which control the blood-supply of 
the part. In other cases diseases ascribed to injury of trophic 
nerves have been shown to be due to injury of the sensory 
nerves of the part, which having lost its feeling, is exposed to 
injuries from which it would otherwise have been protected. 
There are, however, cases which seem to indicate a direct nm 
tritive influence of the nervous system on the tissues; als for 
example the acute bedsores seen in some diseased states of the 
spinal cord and leading to extensive destruction of the skin in 
a very few hours; and there is direct experimental evidence 
to show that stimulation of the branches of the pneumogastric 
nerve going to the heart tends to restore that organ when ex¬ 
hausted, while stimulation of the sympathetic branches has a 
precisely opposite effect (see Chapter XVIII). There is also 
no doubt that each nerve-fibre depends for the maintenance 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 193 

of its nutrition on a nerve-cell since, if divided in its course, 
the part separated from the cell rapidly degenerates. It 
might also be urged that secretory nerves are trophic nerves 
in the true sense of the word, since when excited they 
cause the secretory cells to live in a special way, and produce 
substances which when unacted upon by their nerves they 
do not form. But if we call secretory nerves trophic we 
must include also under that name all other efferent nerves; 
the nutritive processes going on in a muscular fibre when at 
work are different from those in the same fibre when at rest, 
and the same is true of all other cells the activity of which is 
governed by nerve-fibres. 5. Peripherally-acting inhibitory 
nerves , such as those which slow or stop the beat of the heart. 

Intercentral Nerve-Fibres. These, which do not convey 
impulses between peripheral parts and nerve-centres, but 
connect one centre with another, form a final group in addi¬ 
tion to efferent and afferent nerve-fibres. Many of them 
connect the sporadic and sympathetic ganglia with one an¬ 
other and with the cerebro-spinal centre, while others place 
different parts of this latter in direct communication; as for 
instance different parts of the spinal cord, the brain and the 
spinal cord, and the two halves of the brain. The paths taken 
by some of these commissural fibres will be stated in connec¬ 
tion with the physiology of the brain and spinal cord. 

General Table. We may physiologically classify nerve- 
fibres as in the following tabular form, which is founded upon 
the facts above stated. 




Afferent. 

r Sensory. 

Reflex. 

Excito-motor. 

Inhibitory. 

Nerve-fibres. - 

Peripheral. 

Efferent. j 

f Motor. 

| Vaso-motor. 

! Secretory. 

1 Trophic. 

[ Inhibitory. 


Intercentral. < 

[ Exciting. 

! Inhibitory. 


The Electrical Phenomena of Nerves. 

Under certain 


conditions electrical currents can be led off from living nerve- 





194 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


trunks and studied by aid of a galvanometer: in all respects 
these currents correspond to those of muscle, except that they 
are feebler. A perfectly fresh uninjured nerve at rest is 
isolectric, and so is a completely dead nerve. A dying por¬ 
tion of a nerve is negative to a more normal portion, and in 
consequence, if electrodes be placed, one on the centre and 
the other on the cut end of a freshly-removed portion of nerve, 
a current will be found passing through the connecting wire 
from the central portion of the piece of nerve towards the 
peripheral. A region of nerve in activity, that is transmit¬ 
ting a nervous impulse, is electro-negative to a region at rest, 
other things being equal; accordingly, an action-current or 
negative variation can be demonstrated on nerves as on mus¬ 
cles; the electrical change starting from the point of stimu¬ 
lation and travelling along the trunk, to be found at a distant 
part at a time when it has gone from the place of its first ap¬ 
pearance. The account of the similar phenomena in muscle 
(Chap. X) may be consulted for a fuller statement. 

The Stimuli of Nerve-Fibres. Nerve-fibres, like mus¬ 
cular fibres, possess no automaticity; acted upon by certain 
external forces or stimuli they propagate a change, which is 
known as a nervous impulse, from the point acted upon to 
their ends; but they do not generate nervous impulses when 
left entirely to themselves. Normally, in the living Body 
the stimulus acts on a nerve-fibre at one of its ends, being 
either some change in a nerve-centre with which the fibre is 
connected (efferent nerves) or some change in an organ at¬ 
tached to the outer end of the nerve (afferent fibres). Ex¬ 
periment shows, however, that a nerve can be stimulated in 
any part ot its course; that it is irritable all through its ex¬ 
tent. If, for example, the sciatic of a frog be exposed in the 
thigh and divided, it will be found that electric shocks ap¬ 
plied at the point of division to the outer half of the nerve 
stimulate the motor fibres in it, and cause the muscular fibres 
of the leg to contract: and similarly such shocks applied to 
the cut end of the central half irritate the afferent fibres in 
it, as shown by the signs of feeling exhibited by the animal. 
In ourselves, too, we often have the opportunity of observing 
that the sensory fibres can be stimulated in their course at 
some distance from their ends. A blow at the back of the 
elbow, at the point commonly known as the “ funny bone ”or 
the “ crazy bone,” compresses the ulnar nerve there against the 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 195 

subjacent bone, and in addition to irritating the nerves of 
the skin at the point struck, starts nervous impulses which 
make themselves known by severe tingling pain referred to 
the little and ring fingers to which the ulnar nerve is dis¬ 
tributed. This shows not only that the nerve-fibres can be 
irritated in their course as well as at their ends, but also that 
sensations do not directly tell us where a nerve-fibre has been 
excited. No matter where in its course an impulse causing 
sensation has been started, we irresistibly refer its origin to 
the peripheral end of the afferent nerve-fibre affected. 

General and Special Nerve-stimuli. Certain external 
forces excite all nerve-fibres, and in any part of their course. 
These are known as general nerve-stimuli ; others act only 
on the end-organs of nerve-fibres, and often only on one kind 
of end-organ, and hence cannot be made to excite all nerves: 
these latter are commonly known as special nerve-sti?nuli. 
In reality they are not properly nerve-stimuli at all; but 
only things which so affect the irritable tissues attached to 
the ends of certain nerve-fibres as to make these tissues in 
turn excite the nerves. For example, light itself will not 
stimulate any nerve, not even the optic: but in the eye it 
effects changes (perhaps of a chemical nature) by which 
nerve-stimuli are produced and these stimulate the optic 
nerve-fibres. The ends of the nerves in the skin are not 
accessible to light nor are the proper end organs on which 
the light acts present there, so light does not lead to the pro¬ 
duction of nervous impulses in them: but the optic nerve 
without its peculiar end-organs would be just as insensible 
to light as these are. Similarly the aerial vibrations which 
affect us as sounds do not stimulate directly the fibres of the 
auditory nerve. They act on terminal organs in the ear, and 
these then stimulate the fibres of the nerve of hearing, just 
as they would any other nerve which happened to be con¬ 
nected with them. 

General Nerve Stimuli. Those known are : (1) Electric 
currents. An electric shock passed through any part of any 
nerve-fibre powerfully excites it. A steady current passing 
through a nerve does not stimulate it, but any sudden 
change in this., whether an increase or a decrease, does. A 
very gradual change in the amount of electricity passing 
through a nerve in a unit of time does not stimulate it. 
(2) Mechanical stimuli. Any sudden pressure or traction, a3 


196 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


a blow or a pull, will stimulate a nerve-fibre. On the other 
hand steady pressure, or pressure very slowly increased from 
a minimum, will not excite the nerve. (3) Thermal stimuli. 
Any sudden heating or cooling of a nerve, as for instance 
bringing a hot wire close to it, will stimulate; slow changes 
of temperature will not. (4) Chemical stimuli. Many sub¬ 
stances which chemically alter the nerve-fibre stimulate 
before killing it; thus dipping the cut end of a nerve into 
a strong solution of common salt will excite it; very slow 
chemical change in a nerve fails to stimulate. 

In the case of all these general stimuli it will be seen that 
as one condition of their efficacy they must act with con¬ 
siderable suddenness. On the other hand too transient in¬ 
fluences have no effect. An electric shock sent for only 
0.0015 of a second through a nerve does not stimulate it: ap¬ 
parently the inertia of the nerve molecules is too great to be 
overcome by so brief an action. So, also, strong sulphuric 
acid and some other liquids kill nerves immediately, altering 
them so rapidly that they die before being stimulated. 

Special Nerve-stimuli. These as already explained act 
only on particular nerves, not because one nerve is essen¬ 
tially different from another, but because their influence is 
excited through special end-organs which are attached to some 
nerves. These stimuli are: (1) Changes occurring in central 
organs, of whose nature we know next to nothing, but which 
excite the efferent nerve-fibres connected with them. The 
remaining special stimuli act on afferent fibres through the 
sense-organs. They are: (2) Light, which by the interven¬ 
tion of organs in the eye excites the optic nerve. (3) Sound, 
which by the intervention of organs in the ear excites the 
auditory nerve. (4) Heat, which through end-organs in 
the skin is able, by very slight changes, to excite certain 
nerve-fibres: such slight changes of temperature being 
efficient as would be quite incapable of acting as general 
nerve-stimuli without the proper end-organs. (5) Chemical 
agencies, which when extremely feeble and incapable of 
acting as general stimuli can act as special stimuli through 
special, end-organs in the mouth and nose (as in taste and 
smell) and probably in other parts of the alimentary tract, 
where very feeble acids and alkalies seem able to excite cer¬ 
tain nerves, and reflexly through them excite movements or 
render active the cells concerned in making the digestive 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 197 

liquids. (G) Mechanical stimuli when so feeble as to be ineffi¬ 
cient as general stimuli. Pressure on the skin of the fore¬ 
head or of the back of the hand, equal to .002 gram (.03 grain) 
can be felt through the end-organs of the sensory fibres there, 
but would be quite incapable of acting as a general stimulus 
if applied directly to the nerve-fibre. 

It will be noticed as regards the special stimuli of afferent 
nerves that many of them are merely less degrees of general 
stimuli ; the end-organs in skin, mouth, and nose are in fact 
excited by the same things as nerve-fibres, but they are far 
more irritable. In the case of the higher senses, seeing and 
hearing, however, the end-organs seem to differ entirely in 
property from nerve-fibres, being excited by sonorous and 
luminous vibrations which, so far as we know, will in no 
degree of intensity directly excite nerve-fibres. To construct 
an end-organ capable of recognizing very slight pressures we 
may imagine that all that would be needed would be to expose 
directly a very delicate end-branch of the axis cylinder; and 
this seems in fact to be the case in the nerves of the transpar¬ 
ent exposed part of the eyeball, if not in some other parts of 
the external integument of the Body. But as axis cylinders 
are quite unirritable by light or sound a mere exposure of 
them would be useless in the eye or ear, and in each case we 
find accordingly a very complex apparatus developed, whose 
function it is to convert modes of motion which do not 
excite nerves into others which do. We might compare 
this apparatus to a fuse with a detonating cap attached ; the 
stimulus of a blow from a hammer which would not itself 
ignite the fuse, acting on the detonating material (repre¬ 
senting an “end-organ”) causes it to give off a spark, and 
this in turn ignites the fuse which answers to the nerve-fibre. 

Specific Nerve-energies. We have already seen that a 
nervous impulse propagated along a nerve-fibre will give rise 
to different results according as different nerve-fibres are 
concerned. Travelling along one fibre it will arouse a sensa¬ 
tion, along another a movement, along a third a secretion. In 
addition we may observe readily that these different results 
may be produced by the same physical force when it acts 
upon different nerves. Badiant energy, for example, falling 
into the eye causes a sensation of sight, but falling upon the 
skin one of heat, if any. The different results which follow 
rthe stimulation of different nerves do not then depend upon 


198 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


differences in the physical forces exciting them. This is 
still further shown by the fact that different physical forces 
acting upon the same nerve arouse the same kind of sensa¬ 
tion. Light reaching the eye causes a sight sensation, but if 
the optic nerve be irritated by a blow on the eyeball a sensa¬ 
tion of light is felt just as if actual light had stimulated the 
nerve-ends; and a similar result follows if an electric shock be 
sent through the eyeball and optic nerve. Different nerves 
excited by the same stimulus produce different results, and 
the same nerve excited by different stimuli gives the same 
result. How are these facts to be explained-?- ^ 

The first explanation which suggests itself is that the 
various nerves differ in their properties : that electricity ap¬ 
plied to a motor nerve causes a muscle to contract, and 
to the optic nerve a visual sensation, and to the lingual 
nerve a sensation of taste, because nervous impulses in 
the motor, optic, and lingual nerves differ from one an¬ 
other. This was the view held by the older physiologists; 
and that supposed peculiarity of a muscular nerve by which 
its irritation caused a muscular contraction, and that of 
of the optic nerve in consequence of which its excitation 
caused a sensation of sight, and so on, they called the specific 
energy of the nerve. Seeing further that when a pure motor 
nerve was cut and its peripheral stump pinched the muscles 
connected with it contracted, but that when its central end 
was pinched no sensation or other recognizable change fol¬ 
lowed, while exactly the reverse was true of a sensory nerve, 
they believed that afferent nerves differed essentially from 
efferent nerves, inasmuch as the latter could only propagate 
impulses centrifugally and the former only centripetally. 
Now, however, we have much reason to believe that this view 
is wrong, and that all nerve-fibres, though perhaps exhibiting 
some minor differences, are essentially alike in their physio¬ 
logical properties, and can carry nervous impulses either way. 
The differences observed depend in fact not on any differ¬ 
ences in the nerve-fibres, but on the different parts connected 
with their ends; that is to say, on the different terminal 
organs excited by the impulses conveyed by the fibre. A 
motor fibre is one which has at its peripheral end a muscular 
fibre, and a centrifugally travelling impulse reaching this will 
cause it to contract: but the cells connected with its central 
end are not of such a nature as to give rise to sensations 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 199 


when centripetally travelling impulses reach them, or to 
transmit these to other efferent fibres and so cause reflex 
movements; and therefore when a motor fibre is stimulated 
in the middle of its course the outward-going impulse causes 
a movement, while the centrally travelling impulse, starting 
at the same time, gives no direct sign of its existence. Simi¬ 
larly for a sensory nerve such as the ulnar, already referred 
to: if it be stimulated at the elbow the centrally travelling 
impulse will cause a sensation of pain by exciting the brain- 
centre connected with it, but the outward travelling impulse 
not reaching muscular fibres or other parts which it can 
arouse to activity, remains concealed from our notice. In 
other words, the so-called specific energy of a nerve-fibre de¬ 
pends upon the terminal organs on which it can act, and not 
on any peculiarity of the nerve-fibre itself. 

Proofs that all Nerve-Fibres are Physiologically Alike. 
(1) The most marked difference between nerve-fibres is obvi¬ 
ously that between efferent and afferent, and the microscope 
fails entirely to show any differences between the two. Some 
motor and some sensory fibres may be bigger or less than 
others, some may be white and others may be gray; but such 
differences are secondary, and have no direct relation to the 
function of a fibre as afferent or efferent. We can recognize 
no constant difference in structure between the two. (2,) 
The physical properties and chemical composition of motor 
and sensory nerves agree in all known points. (3) When a 
nerve, say a motor one, is stimulated half-way between the 
centre and a muscle, a nervous impulse , as we call it, is 
propagated to the muscle, which impulse starts at the point 
stimulated and travels at a definite rate to the muscle, the 
contraction of which latter gives proof of its arrival. Now 
starting at the same moment from the same point, and 
travelling at the same rate, is that change in the elec¬ 
trical condition of the nerve which can be detected by a 
galvanometer, the so-called negative variation or action cur¬ 
rent. When a nerve is excited from its end-organ, as for 
example the optic nerve by light falling into the eyeball, 
or a motor nerve by a stimulus arising in a centre, an action 
current exactly like that observed with artificial stimulation 
travels along it. Since this negative variation always accom¬ 
panies a nervous impulse, appearing when it appears and dis¬ 
appearing when it disappears, we conclude that it is a change 


200 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


in the electrical properties of the nerve dependent on that 
internal movement of its molecules which constitutes a ner¬ 
vous impulse. It is an externally recognizable physical sign, 
and the only known one, of the existence of the nervous im¬ 
pulse while it is travelling along the fibre. If the muscle were 
cut away from the end of the nerve we could still detect that 
a nervous impulse had travelled from the point of stimulation 
to that where the fibres were divided, by tracking the nega¬ 
tive variation. If, while stimulating a motor nerve half-way 
in its course, we examine galvanometrically the portion lying 
central to the stimulated point we find a well-marked centripe- 
tally travelling action current; it starts at the same moment as 
the efferent negative variation and travels in the same manner, 
hut the nervous impulse of which it is a sign produces no more 
effect than the efferent impulse would after the muscle had been 
cut away; for it does not reach any muscular fibre, or sen¬ 
sory or reflex centre, which it can arouse to activity. Hence 
it is clear that the motor nerve can conduct impulses equally 
well in either direction; and similar experiment proves the 
same thing for pure sensory nerves. 

While, however, by chemical or electrical stimulation of 
a motor or a secretory nerve we can get a muscular con¬ 
traction or a secretion apparently quite identical with that 
produced by natural stimulation, we cannot make the same 
assertion with regard to afferent nerves. It is possible by 
gentle stimulation of a cutaneous afferent nerve through its 
end-organs in the skin to excite the centres, so that they in 
turn give rise to definitely combined reflex muscular con¬ 
tractions, producing, even in the absence of all consciousness, 
an useful movement. But if the skin be removed and the 
outer end of its afferent nerve stimulated directly, though 
the centres can be thus-excited and caused to send out im¬ 
pulses to muscles, the movements which result are random 
kicks and jerks, very different from the definite, orderly 
movements which follow suitable stimulation through the 
skin. And as regards certain nerves of special sense some¬ 
thing similar seems to be true. It has indeed been stated 
that mechanical injury of the optic nerve, as by cutting it 
during a surgical operation, causes a sensation of light in 
patients not anaesthized, but this has been denied; and 
though one positive observation counts for more in such a 
case than many negative, we must take into account the 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 201 


fact that in no other sense-organ has the direct stimulation 
of the proper nerve-trunk in any other way than through 
the sense-organ at its outer end, been proved to give rise 
to true sensations of special sense. Stimulation of the nerves 
exposed in a wound does not cause a true touch sensation, 
but a feeling of pain; and similarly irritation of the trunks 
of the nerves of taste by diseased conditions does not seem to 
ever cause true taste sensations unless the end-organs in the 
mouth be also excited. Even if it turn out to be true that 
a nerve of special sense is only capable of giving rise to 
feelings belonging to the sphere of that sense when ex¬ 
cited through its proper end-organs, that does not prove 
that its nerve-fibres have any unique faculty distinguishing 
them in property from other nerve-fibres. It only means 
that the brain organ, the central nerve-cell mechanism, to be 
excited by the nerve is highly complex, and only responds 
with the proper sensation when stimulated in proper strength 
and proper rhythm, and the sense organs accomplish this. 
Even the most delicate artificial stimulation that we can 
apply to a naked nerve-trunk is undoubtedly a crude and 
gross thing compared with the stimuli arising in the retina 
when light enters the eye, or in certain skin nerve ejid- 
organs when moderate heat falls on them. If we merely 
wish to get a noise out of a piano it does not matter how 
we strike it, if we strike hard enough ; and a muscular con¬ 
traction or an irregular set of muscular contractions excited 
by direct stimulation of a nerve-trunk may be compared to 
such a noise. If we wish for’a definite musical chord we 
must strike through the keyboard in a definite way; and the 
orderly combined muscular movements and the special sensa¬ 
tions which follow stimulation through the proper sense- 
organs may be compared to such chords. In our bodies the 
keyboards are different in eye, ear, and skin, and adapted to 
be set in action by different external physical agencies, and 
the strings in connection with each keyboard are different 
and give different results; but the connecting apparatus, the 
nerve-fibre, lying between the keys in the sense-organs and 
the strings respectively responding to them in the centres, 
is essentially the same in all cases. 

To put the case more definitely: Light outside the eye 
exists as ethereal vibrations, sound outside the ear as vibra¬ 
tions of the air (commonly). Each kind of vibration acts on 


202 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


a particular end-organ in eye or ear which is adapted to be 
acted upon by it, and in turn these end-organs excite the 
optic and auditory nerve-fibres; these in consequence trans¬ 
mit impulses, which reaching different parts of the brain 
excite them; the excitement of one of these brain-centres is 
associated with sonorous and of the other with visual sensa¬ 
tions. The nervous impulse in the two cases is quite alike, 
at least as to quality (though it may differ in quantity and 
rhythm) and the resulting difference in quality of the sensa¬ 
tions cannot depend on it. The quality differences in these 
cases must be products of the central nervous system. If we 
had a set of copper wires we might by sending precisely 
similar electric currents through them produce very different 
results if different things were interposed in their course. 
In one case the current might be sent through water and 
decompose it, doing chemical work; in another, through the 
coil of an electro-magnet and raise a weight; in a third, 
through a thin platinum wire and develop light and heat; 
and so on, the result depending on the terminal organs, as we 
may call yiem, of each wire. Or, on the other hand, we 
might generate the current in each wire differently, in one 
oy a DanielFs cell, in a second by a thermo-electric machine, 
ni a third by the rotation of a magnet inside a coil, but the 
currents in the wires would be essentially the same, as the 
nervous impulses are in a nerve-fibre. No matter how they 
have been started, provided their amount is the same, 
whether they shall produce similar or dissimilar results, de¬ 
pends only on whether they are connected with similar or 
dissimilar end-organs. 

To sum up: Afferent and efferent nerve-fibres differ in no 
fundamental physiological property; they are simple trans¬ 
mitters, everywhere alike in faculty. We may extend this 
statement to the subdivisions of each kind, and say that 
motor, vasomotor and secretory efferent fibres, and tactile, 
auditory and visual afferent fibres are in all essentials like one 
another; and that a nervous impulse is alike in every nerve, 
varying it may be in intensity and in the rate at which 
others succeed it, in different cases, but the same in kind. 
Just as all muscles are alike in general physiological proper¬ 
ties, and differ in special function according to the parts on 
which they act, so are all nerve-fibres alike in general physio¬ 
logical properties, and differ in special function only because 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 203 


they are attached, to special things. The special physiology 
of various nerves will hereafter be considered in connection 
with the working of various mechanisms in the Body. 

The Nature of a Nervous Impulse. Since between 
sense-organs and sensory centres, and these latter and the 
muscles, nervous impulses are the only means of communi¬ 
cation, it is through them that we arrive at our opinions con¬ 
cerning the external universe and through them that we are 
able to act upon it; their ultimate nature is therefore a 
matter of great interest, but one about which we unfortu¬ 
nately know very little. We cannot well imagine it any¬ 
thing but a mode of motion of the molecules of the nerve- 
fibres, but beyond this hypothesis we cannot go far. In 
many points the phenomena presented by nerve-fibres as 
transmitters of disturbances are like the phenomena of wires 
as transmitters of electricity, and when the phenomena of cur¬ 
rent electricity were first observed there was a great ten¬ 
dency, explaining one unknown by another, to consider ner¬ 
vous impulses merely as electrical currents. The increase of 
our knowledge concerning both nerves and electric currents, 
however, has made such an hypothesis almost, if not quite, 
untenable. In the first place nerve-fibres are extremely bad 
conductors of electricity—so bad that it is impossible to sup¬ 
pose them used in the Body for that purpose; and in the 
second place, merely physical continuity of a nerve-fibre, 
such as would not interfere with the passage of an electric 
current, will not suffice for the transmission of a nervous im¬ 
pulse. For instance if a damp string be tied around a nerve, 
or if it be cut and its two moist ends placed in contact, no 
nervous impulse will be transmitted across the constricted or 
divided point although an electrical current would pass 
readily. An electrical shock may be used like many other 
stimuli to upset the equilibrium of the nerve-molecules and 
start a nervous impulse, which then travels along the fibre, 
but is just as different from the stimulus exciting it as a 
muscular contraction is from the stimulus which calls it 
forth. 

Careful study of the action-current gives, perhaps, some 
information regarding the nature of nervous impulses. That 
local negativity which causes the current begins at the stimu¬ 
lated point of a nerve at the same time as the nervous impulse 
and travels along the nerve at the same rate. Hence we con- 


204 


THE HUMAN BODY, 


elude that the new internal molecular arrangement in a nerve- 
fibre which constitutes its active as compared with its resting 
state, is one which changes also the electrical properties of the 
fibre. Now it is found that the negative variation travels along 
the nerve (in the frog) at the rate of 28 metres (92.00 feet) in 
a second, and takes .0007 second to pass by a given point : 
accordingly at any one moment it extends over about 18 mm. 
(0.720 inch) of the nerve-fibre. Moreover, when first reach¬ 
ing a point it is very feeble, then rises to a maximum, and 
gradually fades away again. Taking it as an indication of 
what is going on in the nerve, we may assume that the nerv¬ 
ous impulse is a progressive molecular change of a wavelike 
character, rising from a minimum to a maximum, then grad¬ 
ually ceasing, and about 18 millimetres in wave-length. 

A nervous impulse does not appear to exhaust a fibre when 
transmitted along it. As a ray of light traversing the ether 
sets up a transient change in it but does not in any way use it 
up or leave it less fit to transmit a succeeding ray, so it is 
with the nervous impulse in its transmission. It is true that 
when a motor nerve attached to a muscle is continuously 
stimulated the muscular contractions cease after a certain 
time, though the muscle still responds to electrical stimula¬ 
tion directly applied, and it has been argued that we thus get 
evidence of the exhaustion of the nerve; but it must be 
borne in mind that an electrical shock directly applied is un¬ 
doubtedly a much more powerful stimulus to the muscle than 
any nervous impulse, and the muscle may have been so 
fatigued by its previous work as to have become irresponsive 
to stimulation through its nerve, though still reacting to the 
grosser excitation. And we have direct evidence that stimu¬ 
lation of a nerve may be continued for a very long time with 
out causing loss of activity. As an instance, we may take the 
nerve already mentioned which stops the beat of the heart: 
when it is stimulated continuously for a few seconds the heart 
breaks beyond its control and begins to beat again, though the 
stimulation of the nerve be kept up. This, however, is due to 
fatigue of the endings of the nerve in the heart, and not of 
the nerve fibres, as may be proved in this way: the nerve 
(pneumo-gastric) being carefully exposed in the neck is arti¬ 
ficially cooled in one region to below the temperature at 
which it can conduct a nervous impulse; it is then stimu¬ 
lated at a point nearer the head than the cooled portion: the 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 205 

• 

resulting impulses being blocked on their way to the heart it 
goes on beating regularly. After stimulation of the nerve 
has been continued for several minutes the cooled tract of the 
nerve is allowed to warm again until it becomes capable of 
transmitting a nervous impulse; then the heart-beat is found 
to be promptly stopped or slowed. This shows that if the 
cardiac endings of the nerve be protected from fatigue, pro¬ 
longed stimulation of the nerve-trunk does not interfere with 
its functional capacity: the stimulation still starts nervous 
impulses in it, which as soon as they can pass on produce their 
normal effect on the heart. When long-continued sensations 
become dulled the explanation is no doubt similar: it is the 
end-organs, central or peripheral, or both, which are ex¬ 
hausted, not the nerve-fibres themselves. It has, however,, 
been observed that when artificial stimulation is long applied 
to one point on a nerve-trunk that point sometimes becomes 
unexcitable, though the nerve in general is still quite func¬ 
tional and acts perfectly when the point of application of the 
stimulus is shifted a little: this is especially the case with 
gray nerve-fibres and white fibres having a thin medullary 
sheath. 

The very sparse blood-supply of nerve-trunks is in great 
contrast to the rich supply of those parts of the nervous system 
containing nerve-cells and to the abundant supply of muscles, 
and is an evidence that the chemical changes taking place in 
them during both rest and activity are but small. Seeing 
that functional activity leads to little or no using up of the 
conductive substance of a nerve-fibre any more than the 
transmission of a galvanic current uses up a copper wire, the 
term irritable is not properly applicable to nerve-fibres. Ir¬ 
ritability in its physiological sense we have defined as a con¬ 
dition of a living tissue such that a very small extraneous 
force acting on it may cause it to set free a disproportionately 
large amount of energy, and in that sense muscle-fibres and 
nerve-cells are truly irritable, and they both use up their ma¬ 
terial when at work and are subject to exhaustion. Nerve- 
fibres are excitable and conductive , but not really irritable, 
though on account of their great excitability they are very 
generally spoken of as irritable. 

The Rate of Transmission of a Nervous Impulse. 
This can be measured in several ways. One of the simplest 
is a modification of the simple nerve-muscle experiment il- 


206 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


lustrated in Fig. 62. The muscle M is dissected out with its 
motor nerve attached, and the stimulus applied to the nerve 
and not directly to the muscle. First the stimulus is given 
to the nerve close to the muscle: it is then found that the 
period of latent excitation, as shown by the greater length of 
tu, is a very little longer than when the muscle is directly 
stimulated. Next the stimulus is applied to the nerve, say two 
inches from the muscle, and it is found that tu is consider¬ 
ably longer, the increase in its length being due to the time 
taken by the nervous impulse in travelling along two inches 
of nerve. As we know the rate of movement of the surface 
S, we can readily calculate the amount of the time increase. 
The rate of travel of the nervous impulse as thus ascertained 
is almost incomparably slower than that of an electric cur¬ 
rent, being 28 metres (92.00 feet) per 1". In the motor nerves 
of warm-blooded animals the rate of transmission is somewhat 
faster. Considerable difficulties are met with in making cor¬ 
responding measurements on afferent nerves, and the rates 
obtained by different observers differ widely: probably the 
impulse travels at about the same speed as in the motor nerves 
of the same animal. 

Functions of the Spinal Nerve-Roots. The great ma¬ 
jority of the larger nerve-trunks of the Body contain both 
afferent and efferent nerve-fibres. If one be exposed in its 
course and divided in a living animal, it will be found that 
irritating its peripheral stump causes muscular contractions, 
and pinching its central stump causes signs of sensation, 
showing that the trunk contained both motor and sensory 
fibres. If the trunk be followed away from the centre, as 
it breaks up into smaller and smaller branches, it will be 
found that these too are mixed until very near their endings, 
where the very finest terminal branches close to the end- 
organs, whether muscular fibres, secretory cells, or sensory 
apparatuses, are only afferent or efferent. If the nerve- 
trunk be one that arises from the spinal cord and be ex¬ 
amined progressively back to its origin, it will still be found 
mixed, up to the point where its fibres separate to enter 
either a ventral or a dorsal nerve-root. Each of these latter, 
however, is pure , all the efferent fibres leaving the cord by 
the ventral or anterior roots, and all the afferent entering it by 
the posterior or dorsal. This of course could not be learned 
from examination of the dead nerves, since the best micro- 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 207 

scope fails to distinguish an afferent from an efferent fibre, 
but is readily proved by a simple experiment. If an anterior 
root be cut and its outer end stimulated, the muscles of the 
parts to which the trunk which it helps to form is distributed 
will be made to contract, and the skin will be made to sweat 
also if the root happen to be one that contains secretory 
fibres for the sweat-glands. On the other hand, if the cen¬ 
tral end of the root (that part of it attached to the cord) -be 
stimulated no result will follow, showing that the root con¬ 
tains no sensory, reflex, or excito-motor fibres. With the 
posterior roots the reverse is the case: if one of them be 
divided and its outer end stimulated, no observed result fol¬ 
lows, showing the absence of all efferent fibres; but stimula¬ 
tion of its central end will cause either signs of feeling, or 
reflex actions, or both. We might compare a spinal nerve- 
trunk to a rope made up of green and red threads with at 
one end all the green threads collected into one skein and 
the red into another, which would represent the roots. At 
its farthest end we may suppose the rope divided into finer 
cords, each of these containing both red and green threads, 
down to the very finest branches consisting of only a few 
threads, and those all of one kind, either red or green, one 
representing efferent, the other afferent, fibres. 

The Cranial Nerves. Most of these are mixed also, but 
with one exception (the fifth pair, the small root of which is 
efferent and the large gangliated one afferent) they do not 
present distinct motor and sensory roots, like those of the 
spinal nerves. At their origin from the brain most of them 
are purely afferent or purely efferent, and the mixed character 
which their trunks exhibit is due to cross-branches with 
neighboring nerves, in which afferent and efferent fibres are 
interchanged. The olfactory, optic, and auditory nerves re¬ 
main, however, purely afferent in all their course, and others, 
though not quite pure, contain mainly efferent fibres (as the 
facial) or mainly afferent (as the glosso-pharyngeal). 

The Intercommunication of Nerve-Centres. From the 
anatomical arrangement of the nervous system it is clear that 
it forms one continuous whole. No subdivision of it is 
isolated from the rest, but nerve-trunks proceeding from the 
centres in one direction bind them to various tissues and, 
proceeding in another, to other nerve-centres, which in turn 
are united with other tissues and other centres. Since the 


208 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


physiological character of a nerve-fibre is its conductivity— 
its power of propagating a disturbance when once its mo¬ 
lecular equilibrium has been upset at any one point—it is 
obvious that through the nervous system any one part of the 
Body, supplied with nerves, may react on all other parts 
(with the exception of such as hairs and nails and cartilages, 
which are not known to possess nerves) and excite changes in 
them. Pre-eminently the nervous system forms a uniting 
anatomical and physiological bond through the agency of 
which unity and order are produced in the activities of differ¬ 
ent and distant parts. We may compare it to the Western 
Union Telegraph, the head office of which in New York 
would represent the brain and spinal cord, the more impor¬ 
tant central offices in other large cities the sympathetic 
ganglia, and the minor offices in country stations the sporadic 
ganglia; while the telegraph-wires, directly or indirectly 
uniting all, would correspond to the nerve-trunks. Just as 
information started along some outlying wire may be trans¬ 
mitted to a central office, and from it to others, and then, 
according to what happens to it in the centre, be stopped 
there, or spread in all directions, or in one or two only, so 
may a nervous disturbance reaching a centre by one nerve- 
trunk merely excite changes in it or be radiated from it 
through other trunks more or less widely over the Body and 
arouse various activities in its other component tissues. In 
common life the very frequency of this uniting activity of the 
nervous system is such that we are apt to entirely overlook 
it. We do not wonder how the sight of pleasant food will 
make the mouth water and the hand reach out for it; it 
seems, as we say, “natural,” and to need no explanation. 
But the eye itself can excite no desire, cause the secretion of 
no saliva, and the movement of no limb. The whole com¬ 
plex result depends on the fact that the eye is united by the 
optic nerve with the brain, and that again by other nerves 
with saliva-forming cells, and with muscular fibres of the 
arm; and through these a change excited by light falling 
into the eye is enabled to produce changes in far-removed 
organs, and excite desire, secretion, and movement. In cases 
of disease this action exerted at a distance is more apt to ex¬ 
cite our attention: vomiting is a ^ery common symptom of 
certain brain diseases, and most people know that a disordered 
stomach will produce a headache; while the pain consequent 


GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 209 


upon the hip-disease of children is usually felt, not at the hip- 
joint, but at the knee. 

The Degeneration of Nerve-Fibres separated from their 
Centre. A nerve-fibre may in its course be connected with 
more than one nerve-cell, but one cell always has a special 
influence in maintaining its normal structure and functional 
activity. If cut off from this cell the separated portion 
undergoes degenerative changes, easily recognized in medul- 
lated fibres by a breaking up and, later, a disappearance of 
the medullary sheath. If, for example, the sciatic nerve of 
a warm-blooded animal be completely cut across, all of the 
nerve and its branches beyond the point of section will show 
marked changes in three days or less: the medullary sheath 
separates into small cuboidal pieces, these in a day or two 
more round off at their corners and then are gradually ab¬ 
sorbed,.so that at the end of ten days or a fortnight they have 
entirely disappeared. Meantime the nuclei of the internodes 
multiply and the usually sparse protoplasm around them in¬ 
creases, and encroaches upon and causes the absorption of the 
axis cylinder, so that after some weeks little or no trace of 
true nervous elements can be found. Some three or four days 
after making the section the peripheral portion of the nerve 
ceases to be excitable. If the part of the nerve above the sec¬ 
tion be examined, its fibres will be found to have undergone 
no degeneration except close to the place of section, and it re¬ 
mains excitable; pinching it causes pain, and if any muscle 
branch arising from it be irritated, the muscles contract. If 
instead of cutting a whole mixed nerve-trunk, such as the sci¬ 
atic, we divide only a ventral spinal root (as 5, c, Fig. 71), it is 
found that all the fibres in that part of the root which is cut 
off from the spinal cord degenerate and become unirritable, 
and degenerated fibres can be found in the mixed trunk into 
which the cut root is contintied; while the fibres of the part 
of the root still attached to the cord do not degenerate. 
The nutritional integrity of the anterior root-fibres depends 
therefore on anatomical continuity with the spinal cord, and 
probably with cells there, of the type shown in Fig. 81. On 
the other hand, if the dorsal root only be cut across, the por¬ 
tion of it attached to the cord degenerates, while that still 
connected to the spinal ganglion and the fibres beyond the 
ganglion remain unaltered: the nutritive centres for the dor¬ 
sal root-fibres are the cells of the corresponding root-ganglion. 


210 


THE UUMAN BODY. 


After complete section of the nerve-trunk supplying a 
region of the Body that region is for a time paralyzed, but 
feeling and the power of movement may return to it. It 
used to be thought that in such cases the divided nerve-fibres 
grew together again. Such is not the case: all those parts of 
the fibres which have been cut off from their centres com¬ 
pletely disappear, and when function is restored it is by the 
formation of new nerve-fibres around outgrowths from the 
cut ends of those parts of the fibres still united to their cen¬ 
tres, whether these be in brain, spinal cord, spinal ganglia, or 
elsewhere. 

Nerves, as w T e have seen, often give fibres to one another 
by means of uniting branches, as in various plexuses and 
elsewhere; and when a nerve-branch may contain fibres de¬ 
rived from some one of two or more original trunks which 
have communicating branches, it is often of importance to 
determine in which original trunk its fibres left the brain or 
spinal cord. In such cases the determination may often be 
made by dividing one of the possible sources of origin and 
after a few days examining the branch for degenerated 
fibres, which are easily recognized by the microscope. If 
such are found, then they left the centre in the divided trunk; 
if not, the branch gets no fibres from that trunk. This 
method of tracking the nerve-fibres of a given original trunk 
to their final distribution in one or more of many possible 
branches is known as the Wallerian method . Instances of 
its application will be given in later chapters. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


THE ANATOMY OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 

General Statement. During life the blood is kept flow¬ 
ing with great rapidity through all parts of the Body (except 
the few non-vascular tissues already mentioned) in definite 
for it by the heart and blood-vessels. 
These paths, which under normal circum¬ 
stances it never leaves, constitute a con¬ 
tinuous set of closed tubes (Fig. 87) 
beginning at and ending again in the 
heart, and simple only close to that organ. 
Elsewhere it is greatly branched, the most 
numerous and finest branches (l and a) 
being the capillaries. The heart is essen¬ 
tially a bag with muscular walls, internally 
divided into four chambers (cl, g, e,f). 
Those at one end (cl and e) receive blood 
from vessels opening into them and known 
as the veins. From there the blood passes 
on to the remaining chambers (g and/) 
which have very powerful walls and, for¬ 
cibly contracting, drive the blood out into 
vessels (m and b) which communicate with 
them and are known as the arteries. The 
big arteries divide into smaller; these into smaller again 
(Fig. 88) until the branches become too small to be traced by 
the unaided eye, and these smallest branches end in the 
capillaries, through which the blood flows and enters the 
commencements of the veins ; and these convey it again to 
the heart. At certain points in the course of the blood-paths 
valves are placed, which prevent a back-flow. This alternat¬ 
ing reception of blood at one end by the heart and its ejec¬ 
tion from the other go on during life steadily about seventy 
times in a minute, and so keep the liquid constantly in 
motion. 


paths prescribed 



Fig. 87.—The heart 
and blood-vessels dia¬ 
gram matically repre¬ 
sented. 


211 



212 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The vascular system is completely closed except at two 
points in the neck where lymph-vessels open into the veins; 
there some lymph is poured in and mixed directly with the 
blood. Accordingly everything which leaves the blood must 
do so by oozing through the walls of the blood-vessels, and 
everything which enters it must do the same, except matters 



Fig. 88.—The arteries of the hand, showing the communications or anastomoses 
of different arteries and the fine terminal twigs given off from the larger trunks; 
these twigs end in the capillaries which would only become visible if magnified. R , 
the radial artery on which the pulse is usually felt at the wrist; U, the ulnar ar¬ 
tery. 

conveyed in by the lymph at the points above mentioned. 
This interchange through the walls of the vessels takes place 
only in the capillaries, which form a sort of irrigation system 
all through the Body. The heart, arteries, and veins are all 
merely arrangements for keeping the capillaries full and 
renewing the blood within them. It is in the capillaries 
alone that the blood does its nhvsiological work. 




















ANATOMY OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 213 


The Position of the Heart. The heart (h, Fig. 1) lies 
in the chest immediately above the diaphragm and opposite 
the lower two thirds of the breast-bone. It is conical in 
form with its base or broader end turned upwards and pro¬ 
jecting a little on the right of the sternum, while its narrow 
end or apex, turned downwards, projects to the left of that 
bone, where it may be felt beating between the cartilages of 
the fifth and sixth ribs. The position of the organ in the 
Body is therefore oblique with reference to its long axis. It 
does not, however, lie on the left side as is so commonly sup¬ 
posed but very nearly in the middle line, with the upper part 
inclined to the right, and the lower (which may be more 
easily felt beating—hence the common belief) to the left. 

The Membranes of the Heart. The heart does not lie 
bare in the chest but is surrounded by a loose bag composed 
of connective tissue and called the pericardium. This bag, 
like the heart, is conical but turned the other way, its broad 
part being lowest and attached to the upper surface of the 
diaphragm. Internally it is lined by a smooth serous mem¬ 
brane like that lining the abdominal cavity, and a similar 
layer (the visceral layer of the pericardium) covers the out¬ 
side of the heart itself, adhering closely to it. Each of the 
serous layers is covered by a stratum of flat cells, and in the 
space between them is found a small quantity of liquid 
which moistens the contiguous surfaces, and diminishes the 
friction which would otherwise occur during the movements 
of the heart. 

Internally the heart is also lined by a fibrous membrane, 
covered with a single layer of flattened cells, and called the 
endocardium. Between the endocardium and the visceral 
layer of the pericardium the bulk of the wall of the heart 
lies and is made up mainly of striped muscular tissue ( myocar¬ 
dium ) differing from that of the skeletal muscles; but con¬ 
nective tissues, blood-vessels, nerve-cells, and nerve-fibres are 
also abundant in it. 

Note. —Sometimes the pericardium becomes inflamed, this 
affection being known as pericarditis. It is extremely apt to 
occur in acute rheumatism, and great care should be taken 
never, even for a moment, except under medical advice, to 
expose a patient to cold during that disease, since any chill 
is then especially apt to set up pericarditis. In the earlier 
stages of pericardiac inflammation the rubbing surfaces on 


214 


7 HE HUMAN BODY. 



ps 


Fig. 89.—Diagram representing a 
through the heart from base to apex 


the outside of the heart and the inside of the pericardium 
become roughened, and their friction produces a sound 
which can be recognized through the stethoscope. In later 
stages great quantities of liquid may accumulate in the peri¬ 
cardium so as to seriously impede the heart’s beat. 

The Cavities of the Heart. On opening the heart (see 
diagram Fig. 89) it is found to be subdivided by a longi¬ 
tudinal partition or sep¬ 
tum into completely sepa¬ 
rated right and left halves, 
the partition running from 
about the middle of the 
base to a point a little on 
the right of the apex. 
Each of the chambers on 
the sides of the septum is 
again incompletely divided 
transversely, into a thinner 
basal portion into which 
veins open, known as the 
auricle, and a thicker apical portion from which arteries 
arise, called the ventricle. The heart thus consists of a right 
auricle and ventricle and a left auricle and ventricle, each 
auricle communicating by an auriculo-ventmcular orifice 
with the ventricle on its own side, and there is no direct 
communication whatever through the septum between the 
opposite sides of the heart. To get from one side to the 
other the blood must leave the heart and pass through a set 
of capillaries, as may readily be seen by tracing the course of 
the vessels in Fig. 87. 

The Heart as seen from its Exterior. When the heart 
is viewed from the side turned towards the sternum (Fig. 90) 
the two auricles, Atd and As, are seen to be separated by a 
deep groove from the ventricles, Vd and Vs. A more 
shallow furrow runs between the ventricles and indicates the 
position of the internal longitudinal septum. On the dorsal 
aspect of the heart (Fig. 91) similar furrows may be noted, 
and on one or other of the two figures the great vessels 
opening into the cavities of the heart may be seen. The 
pulmonary artery, P, arises from the right ventricle, and 
very soon divides into the right and left pulmonary arteries, 
Pd and Ps, which break up into smaller branches and enter 



ANATOMY OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 215 


the corresponding lungs. Opening into the right auricle are 
two great veins (see also Fig. 89), cs and ci, known re¬ 
spectively as the upper and lower venae cavce, or “ hollow ” 
veins; so called by the older anatomists because they are” 
frequently found empty after death. Into the back of the 
right auricle opens also another vein, Vc, called the coronary 



Fig. 90.—The heart and the great blood vessel attached to it, seen from the 
side towards the sternum. The left cavities and the vessels connected with them 
are colored red; the right black. Atd, right -auricle: /.Adx and As, the right and 
left auricular appendages; Vd, right ventricle; Fs, left ventricle; Aa, aorta: ^46, 
innominate artery; Cs, left common carotid artery; Ssi. left subclavian artery; 
P, main trunk of the pulmonary artery, and Pd and Ps, its branches to the right 
and left lungs; cs, superior vena cava; Ade and Asi, the right and left innominate 
veins; pd and ps, the right and left pulmonary veins; crd and crs, the right and 
left coronary arteries. 

vein or sinus, which brings back blood that has circulated 
in the walls of the heart itself. Springing from the left ven¬ 
tricle, and appearing from beneath the pulmonary artery 
when the heart is looked at from the ventral side, is a great 
artery, the aorta, Aa. It forms an arch over the base of the 
heart and then runs down behind it at the back of the chest. 
From the convexity of the arch of the aorta several great 














216 


THE HUMAN BODY. 



Fig. 91.— The heart viewed from its dorsal aspect. Atd, right auricle; ci, in¬ 
ferior vena cava; V c, coronary vein. The remaining letters of reference have 
Mie same signification as in Fig. 90. 

coronary sinus. Into the left auricle open two right and two 
left pulmonary veins, ps and pd, which are formed by the 
union of smaller veins proceeding from the lungs. 

In the diagram Fig. 89 from which the branches of the 
great vessels near the heart have been omitted for the sake 
of clearness, the connection of the various vessels with the 


branches are given off, Ssi, Cs, Ah; but before that, close to 
the heart, the aorta gives off two coronary arteries, branches 
of which are seen at crd and crs lying in the groove over the 
partition between the ventricles, and which carry to the sub¬ 
stance of the organ that blood which comes back through the 




ANATOMY OF THE HEART AND BLOOD- VESSELS. 217 


chambers of the heart can be better seen. Opening into the 
right auricle are the superior and inferior venae cavae (cs and 
ci) and proceeding from the right ventricle the pulmonary 
artery , P. Opening into the left auricle are the right and 
left pulmonary veins {pel and ps) and springing from the left 
ventricle the aorta, A. 

The Interior of the Heart. The communication of each 
auricle with its ventricle is also represented in the diagram 
Fig. 89, and the valves which are present at those points 
and at the origin of the pulmonary artery and that of the 
aorta. Internally the auricles are for the most part smooth, 
but from each a hollow pouch, the auricular appendage , pro¬ 
jects over the base of the corresponding ventricle as seen at 
Adx and As in Figs. 90 and 91. These pouches have some¬ 
what the shape of a dog’s ear and have given their name to 
the whole auricle. Their interior is roughened by muscular 
elevations, covered by endocardium, known as the fleshy col¬ 
umns (columnce car nee ). On the inside of the ventricles (Fig. 
92) similar fleshy columns are very prominent. 

The Auriculo-Ventricular Valves. These are known as 
right and left , or as the tricuspid and mitral valves respec¬ 
tively. The mitral valve (Fig. 92) consists of two flaps of the 
endocardium fixed by their bases to the margins of the auric- 
ulo-ventricular aperture and with their edges hanging down 
into the ventricle when the heart is empty. These unattached 
edges are not however free, but have fixed to them a number 
of stout connective-tissue cords, the cordce tendinece , which 
are fixed below to muscular elevations, the papillary muscles , 
Mpm and Mpl, on the interior of the ventricle. The cords 
are long enough to let the valve flaps rise into a horizontal 
position and so close the opening between auricle and ven¬ 
tricle which lies between them, and passes up behind the 
onened aorta, Sp, represented in the figure. The tricuspid 
valve is like the mitral, but with three flaps instead of two. 

Semilunar Valves. These are six in number: three at 
the mouth of the aorta, Fig. 92, and three, quite like them, 
at the mouth of the pulmonary artery. Each is a strong 
crescentic pouch fixed by its more curved border, and with 
its free edge turned away from the heart. When the valves 
are in action these free edges meet across the vessel and pre¬ 
vent blood from flowing back into the ventricle. In the 
middle of the free border of each valve is a little cartilagi- 


218 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


nous nodule, the corpus Arantii, and on each side of this the 
edge of the valve is very thin and when it meets its neighbor 
turns up against it and so secures the closure. 

The Arterial System. All the arteries of the Body arise 
either directly or indirectly from the aorta or pulmonary 
artery, and the great majority of them from the former vessel. 


Sp 



Fig. 92.—The left ventricle nnd the commencement of the aorta laid open. 
Mpm, Mpl . the papillary muscles. From their upper ends are seen the cordce 
tendinece proceeding to the edges of the flaps of the mitral valve. The opening 
into the auricle lies between these flaps. At the beginning of the aorta are seen its 
three pouch-like semilunar valves. 


The pulmonary artery only carries blood to the lungs, to un¬ 
dergo exchanges with the air in them after it has circulated 
through the Body generally. 

After making its arch the aorta continues back through 
the chest, giving off many branches on its way. Piercing the 










ANATOMY OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 219 


diaphragm it enters the abdomen and after supplying the 
parts in and around that cavity with branches, it ends oppo¬ 
site the last lumbar vertebra by dividing into the right and 
left common iliac arteries, which carry blood to the lower 
limbs. We have then to consider the branches of the arch of 
the aorta, and those of the descending aorta > which latter is 
for convenience described by anatomists as consisting of the 
thoracic aorta, extending from the end of the arch to the 
diaphragm, and the abdominal aorta, extending from the 
diaphragm to the final subdivision of the vessel. 

Branches of the Arch of the Aorta. From this arise first 
the coronary arteries (crd and crs, Figs. 90 and 91) which 
spring close to the heart, just above two of the pouches of the 
semilunar valve, and carry blood into the substance of that 
organ. The remaining branches of the arch are three in 
number, and all arise from its convexity. The first is the 
innominate artery (Ab, Fig. 90), which is very short, imme¬ 
diately breaking up into the right subclavian artery, and the 
right common carotid. Then comes the left common carotid, 
Cs, and finally the left subclavian, Ssi. 

Each subclavian artery runs out to the arm on its own 
side and after giving off a vertebral artery (which runs up 
the neck to the head in the vertebral canal of the transverse 
processes of the cervical vertebrae), crosses the arm-pit and 
takes there the name of the axillary artery. This contin¬ 
ues down the arm as the brachial artery, which, giving off 
branches on its way, runs to the front of the arm, and just 
below the elbow-joint divides into the radial and ulnar ar¬ 
teries, the lower ends of which are seen at R and U in Fig. 88. 
These supply the forearm and end in the hand by uniting to 
form an arch, from which branches are given off to the fingers. 

The common carotid arteries pass out of the chest into the 
neck, along which they ascend on the sides of the windpipe. 
Opposite the angle of the lower jaw each divides into an 
internal and external carotid artery, right or left as the case 
may be. The external ends mainly in branches for the face, 
scalp, and salivary glands, one great subdivision of it with a 
tortuous course, the temporal artery, being often seen in thin 
persons beating on the side of the brow. The internal carotid 
.artery enters the skull through an aperture in its base and 
supplies the brain, which it will be remembered also gets 
blood through the vertebral arteries. 


220 


THE HUMAN BODY . 


Branches of the Thoracic Aorta. These are numerous 
but small. Some, the intercostal arteries, run out between 
the ribs and supply the chest-walls; others, the bronchial ar¬ 
teries, carry blood to the lungs for their nourishment, that 
carried to them by the pulmonary arteries being brought 
there for another purpose; and a few other small branches 
are given to other neighboring parts. 

Branches of the Abdominal Aorta. These are both large 
and numerous, supplying not only the wall of the posterior 
part of the trunk, but the important organs in the abdominal 
cavity. The larger are: the cceliac axis which supplies stom¬ 
ach, spleen, liver, and pancreas; the superior mesenteric 
artery, which supplies a great part of the intestine; the renal 
arteries, one for each kidney; and finally the inferior mes¬ 
enteric artery, which supplies the rest of the intestine. Be¬ 
sides these the abdominal aorta gives off very many smaller 
branches. 

Arteries of the Lower Limbs. Each common iliac di¬ 
vides into an internal and external iliac artery. The former 
mainly ends in branches to parts lying in the pelvis, but the 
latter passes into the thighs and there takes the name of the 
femoral artery. At first this lies on the ventral aspect of the 
limb, but lower down passes to the back of the femur, and 
above the knee-joint (where it is called the popliteal artery) 
divides into the anterior and posterior tibial arteries, which 
supply the leg and foot. 

The Capillaries. As the arteries are followed from the 
heart, their branches become smaller and smaller, and finally 
cannot be traced without the aid of a microscope Ulti¬ 
mately they pass into the capillaries, the walls of which are 
simpler than those of the arteries, and which form very close 
networks in nearly all parts of the Body; their immense num¬ 
ber compensating for their smaller size. The average diame¬ 
ter of a capillary vessel is .016 mm. (y-gVo inch) so that only 
two or three blood-corpuscles can pass through it abreast, 
and in many parts they are so close that a pin’s point could 
not be inserted between two of them. It is while flowing i n 
these delicate tubes that the blood does its nutritive work, the 
arteries being merely supply-tubes for the capillaries. 

The Veins. The first veins arise from the capillary net¬ 
works in various organs, and like the last arteries are very 
small. They soon increase in size by union, and so form 


ANATOMY OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 221 


larger and larger trunks. These in many places lie near or 
alongside the main artery of the part, but there are many 
more large veins just beneath the skin than there are large 
arteries. This is especially the case in the limbs, the main 
veins of which are superficial, and can in many persons be 
seen as faint blue marks through the skin. Fig. 94 repre¬ 
sents the arm at the front of the elbow-joint after the skin 
and subcutaneous areolar tissue and fat have been removed. 



Fig 93 —A small portion of the capillary network as seen in the frog’s web when 
magnified about 25 diameters, a, a small artery feeding the capillaries; v , v, small 
veins carrying blood back from the latter. 

The brachial artery, B, colored red, is seen lying tolerably 
deep, and accompanied by two small veins (vence comites ) 
which communicate by cross-branches. The great median 
nerve , 1, a branch of the brachial plexus which supplies 
several muscles of the forearm and hand, the skin over a 
great part of the palm and the three inner fingers, is seen 
alongside the artery. The larger veins of the part are seen 







222 


THE HUMAA BODY. 


to form a more superficial network, joined here and there, as 
for instance at *, by branches from deeper parts. Several 
small nerve-branches which supply the skin (2, 3, 4) are seen 
among these veins. It is from the vessel, cep, called the 



Fig. 94.—The superficial veins In front of the elbow-joint. B\ tendon of biceps 
muscle; Z?i\, brachialis intemus muscle; Ft, pronator teres muscle; 1, median 
nerve; 2, 3, 4, nerve-branches to the skin; B, brachial artery, with its small accom¬ 
panying veins; cep , cephalic vein; bas, basilic vein; m', median vein; *, junction of 
a deep-ljdng vein with the cephalic. 


cephalic vein, just above the point where it crosses the median 
nerve, that surgeons usually bleed a patient. 

A great part of the blood of the lower limb is brought back 
by the long saphenous vein, which can be seen in thin persons 
running from the inner side of the ankle to the top of the 








































ANATOMY OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 223 


thigh. All the blood which leaves the heart by the aorta, 
except that flowing through the coronary arteries, is finally 
collected into the superior and inferior vence cavce (cs and ci. 
Figs. 90 and 91), and poured into the right auricle. The 
jugular veins which run down the neck, carrying back the 
blood which went out along the carotid arteries, unite below 
with the arm-vein ( subclavian) to form on each side an in¬ 
nominate vein (Asi and Ade, Fig. 90) and the innominates 
unite to form the superior cava. The coronary-artery blood 
after flowing through the capillaries of the heart itself also 
returns to this auricle by the coronary veins and sinus. 

The Pulmonary Circulation. Through this the blood 
gets back to the left side of the heart and so into the aorta 
again. The pulmonary artery, dividing into branches for 
each lung, ends in the capillaries of those organs. From 
these it is collected by the pulmonary veins, which carry it 
back to the left auricle, whence it passes to the left ventricle 
to recommence its flow through the Body generally. 

The Course of the Blood. From what has been said it is 
clear that the movement of the blood is a circulation . Start¬ 
ing from any one chamber of the heart it will in time return 
to it; but to do this it must pass through at least two sets of 
capillaries; one of these is connected with the aorta and the 
other with the pulmonary artery, and in its circuit the blood 
returns to the heart twice. Leaving the left side it returns to 
the right, and leaving the right it returns to the left: and 
there is no road for it from one side of the heart to the other 
except through a capillary network. Moreover, it always 
leaves from a ventricle through an artery, and returns to an 
auricle through a vein. 

There is then really # only one circulation; but it is not un¬ 
common to speak of two, the flow from the left side of the 
heart to the right, through the Body generally, being called 
the systemic circulation, and from the right to the left, 
through the lungs, the pulmonary circulation. But since 
after completing either of these alone the blood is not back 
at the point from which it started, but is separated from it by 
the septum of the heart, neither is a “circulation” in the 
proper sense of the word. 

The Portal Circulation. A certain portion of the blood 
which leaves the left ventricle of the heart through the aorta 
has to pass through three sets of capillaries before it can again 


224 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


return there. This is the portion which goes through the 
stomach, spleen, pancreas, and intestines. After traversing 
the capillaries of those organs it is collected into the portal 
vein which enters the liver, and breaking up in it into finer 
and finer branches like an artery, ends in the capillaries of 
that organ, forming the second set which this blood passes 
through on its course. From these it is collected by the he¬ 
patic veins, which pour it into the inferior vena cava, which 
carries it to the right auricle, so that 
it has still to pass through the pulmo¬ 
nary capillaries to get back to the left 
side of the heart. The portal vein is 
the only one in the human Body which 
like an artery feeds a capillary net¬ 
work, and the flow from the stomach 
and intestines through the liver to the 
vena cava is often spoken of as the 
portal circulation. 

Diagram of the Circulation. Since 
the two halves of the heart are actu¬ 
ally completely separated from one 
another by an impervious partition, 
although placed in proximity in the 
Body, we may conveniently represent 
the course of the blood as in the accom- 
of the panying diagram (Fig. 95), in which 
the right and left halves of the heart 
are represented at different points in 
the vascular system. Such an arrange¬ 
ment makes it clear that the heart is 
really two pumps working side by side, 
each engaged in forcing the blood to- 
the other. Starting from the left au¬ 
ricle, la, and following the flow, we 
trace it through the left ventricle and along the branches of 
the aorta into the systemic capillaries, sc; from thence it 
passes back through the systemic veins, vc. Reaching the 
right auricle, ra, it is sent into the right ventricle, rv, and 
thence through the pulmonary artery, pa, to the lung capilla¬ 
ries, pc, from which the pulmonary veins, pv, carry it to the 
left auricle, which drives it into the left ventricle, Iv, and this 
asrain into the aorta. 



Fig. 95.—Diagram 
blood vascular system, show 
ing that it forms a single 
closed circuit with two pumps 
in it, consisting of the right 
and left halves of the heart, 
which are represented sepa¬ 
rate in the diagram, ra and 
rv, right auricle and ventricle; 
la and Iv, left auricle and ven¬ 
tricle; ao. aorta; sc, systemic 
capillaries; vc, venae cavae; 
pa, pulmonary artery; pc, pul¬ 
monary capillaries;’ pv, pul¬ 
monary veins. 




ANATOMY OF THE HEA11T AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 225 


Arterial and Venous Blood. The blood when flowing in 
the pulmonary capillaries gives up carbon dioxide to the air 
and receives oxygen from it; and since its coloring matter 
(haemoglobin) forms a scarlet compound with oxygen, it flows 
to the left auricle through the pulmonary veins of a bright 
red color. This color it maintains until it reaches the sys¬ 
temic capillaries, but in these it loses much oxygen to the 
surrounding tissues and gains much carbon dioxide from them. 
But the blood coloring-matter which has lost its oxygen has a 
dark purple color, and since this unoxidized or “reduced” 
haemoglobin is now in excess, the blood returns to the heart 
by the venae cavae of a dark purple-red color. This hue it 
keeps until it reaches the lungs, when the reduced haemoglo¬ 
bin becomes again oxidized. The* bright red blood, rich in 
oxygen and poor in carbon dioxide, is known as “arterial 
blood” and the dark red as “venous blood:” and it must be 
borne in mind that the terms have this peculiar technical 
meaning, and that the pulmonary veins contain arterial blood, 
and the pulmonary arteries , venous blood; the change from 
arterial to venous taking place in the systemic capillaries, and 
from venous to arterial in the pulmonary capillaries. The 
chambers of the heart and the great vessels containing arte¬ 
rial blood are shaded red in Figs. 90 anti 91. 

The Structure of the Arteries. A large artery can by 
careful dissection be separated into three coats: an internal , 
a middle , and an outer. The internal coat tears readily across 
the long axis of the artery and consists of an inner lining of 
flattened nucleated cells, enveloped by a variable number of 
layers composed of membranes or networks of elastic tissue. 
The middle coat is made up of alternating layers of elastic 
fibres and plain muscular tissue; the former running for the 
most part longitudinally and the latter across the long axis 
of the vessel. The outer coat is the toughest and strongest 
because it is mainly made up of white fibrous connective 
tissue; it contains a considerable amount of elastic tissue also, 
and gradually shades off into a loose areolar tissue which 
forms the sheath of the artery, or the tunica adventitia , and 
packs it between surrounding parts. The smaller arteries 
have all the elastic elements less developed. The internal 
coat is consequently thinner, and the middle coat is made up 
mainly of involuntary muscular fibres. As a result the large 
arteries are highly elastic, the aorta being physically much 
like a piece of india-rubber tubing, while the smaller arte- 


226 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ries are highly contractile, in the physiological sense of the 
word. 

Structure of the Capillaries. In the smaller arteries the 
outer and middle coats gradually disappear, and the elastic 
layers of the inner coat also go. Finally, in the capillaries 
the lining epithelium alone is left, with a more or less de¬ 
veloped layer of connective-tissue corpuscles around it, repre¬ 
senting the remnant of the tunica adventitia. These vessels 
are thus extremely well adapted to allow of filtration or dif¬ 
fusion taking place through their thin walls. 

Structure of the Veins. In these the same three primary 
coats as in the arteries are found; the inner and middle coats 
are less developed, while the outer one remains thick, and is 
made up almost entirely of white fibrous tissue. Hence the 
venous walls are much thinner than those of the correspond¬ 
ing arteries, and the veins collapse when empty while the 
stouter arteries remain open. But the toughness of their 
outer coats gives the veins great strength. 

Except the pulmonary artery and the aorta, which possess 
the semilunar valves at their cardiac orifices, the arteries pos¬ 
sess no valves. Many veins on the contrary have such, formed 
by semilunar pouches of the inner coat, attached by one 
margin and having the edge turned towards the heart free. 
These valves, sometimes single, oftener in pairs, and rarely 
three at one level, permit blood to flow only towards the 
heart, for a current in that direction (as in the upper dia¬ 
gram, Fig. 96) presses the valve close against the side of the 
vessel and meets with no obstruction 
A from it. Should any back-flow be at¬ 

tempted, however, the current closes 
up the valve and bars its own passage 
as indicated in the lower figure. These 
valves are most numerous in super¬ 
ficial veins and those of muscular parts. 
They are absent in the venae cavae and 

Spinai v “ aud^the heart tlle portal and pulmonary veins. Usu- 
ally the vein is a little dilated opposite 
a valve, and hence in parts where the 
valves are numerous gets a knotted look. On compressing 
the forearm so as to stop the flow in its subcutaneous veins 
and cause their dilatation, the points at which valves are 
placed can be recognized by their swollen appearance. They 
are most frequently situated where two veins communicate. 


Fig 9B—Diagram to illus 
trate the mode of action of 


end of the vessel. 











CHAPTER XV. 


THE WORKING OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 

The Beat of the Heart. It is possible with some little 
skill and care to open the chest of a living narcotized ani¬ 
mal, such as a rabbit, and see its heart at work, alternately 
contracting and diminishing the cavities within it, and relax¬ 
ing and expanding them. It is then observed that each beat 
commences at the mouths of the great veins; from there runs 
over the rest of the auricles, and then over the ventricles; the 
auricles commencing to dilate the moment the ventricles 
commence to contract. Having finished their contraction 
the ventricles also commence to dilate, and so for some time 
neither they nor the auricles are contracting, but the whole 
heart is expanding. The contraction of any part of the heart 
is known as its systole and the relaxation as its diastole, and 
since the two sides of the heart work synchronously, the au¬ 
ricles together and the ventricles together, we may describe a 
whole “cardiac period” or “heart-beat” as made up succes¬ 
sively of auricular systole , ventricular systole , and pause . 
This cycle is repeated about seventy times a minute; and if 
the whole time occupied by it be subdivided into 100 parts, 
about 9 of these will be occupied by the auricular systole, 
about 30 by the ventricular systole, and 61 by the pause: 
during more than half of life, therefore, the muscle-fibres of 
the heart are at rest. In the pause the heart if taken be¬ 
tween the finger and thumb feels soft and flabby, but during 
the systole it (especially its ventricular portion) becomes hard 
and rigid. 

Change of Form of the Heart. During its systole the 
heart becomes shorter and rounder, mainly from a change in 
the shape of the ventricles. A cross-section of the heart at 
the base of these latter during diastole would be elliptical in 
outline, with its long diameter from right to left; during the 
systole it is more circular, the long axis of the ellipse becom¬ 
ing shortened, while the dorso-ventral diameter remains little 


228 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


altered. At the same time the length of the ventricles is 
lessened, the apex of the heart approaching the base and be¬ 
coming blunter and rounder. 

The Cardiac Impulse. The human heart lies with its 
apex touching the chest-wall between the fifth and sixth ribs 
on the left side of the breast-bone. At every beat a sort of 
tap, known as the “cardiac impulse” or “apex beat,” may be 
felt by the finger at that point. There is, however, no actual 
“ tapping,” since the heart’s apex never leaves the chest-wall. 
During the diastole the soft ventricles yield to the chest-wall 
where they touch it, but during the systole they become hard 
and tense and push it out a little between the ribs, and so 
cause the apex beat. Since the heart becomes shorter during 
the ventricular systole, it might be supposed that at that time 
the apex would move up a little in the chest. This, how¬ 
ever, is not the case, the ascent of the apex towards the base 
of the ventricles being compensated for by a movement of 
the whole heart in the opposite direction. If water be pumped 
into an elastic tube, already moderately full, the tube will be 
distended not only transversely but longitudinally. This is 
what happens in the aorta: when the left ventricle contracts 
and pumps blood forcibly into it, the elastic artery is elongated 
as well as widened, and the lengthening of that limb of its arch 
attached to the heart pushes the latter down towards the dia¬ 
phragm, and compensates for the upward movement of the 
apex due to the shortening of the ventricles. Hence if the 
exposed living heart be watched it appears as if during the 
systole the base of the heart moved towards the tip, rather 
than the reverse. 

Events occurring within the Heart during a Cardiac 
Period. Let us commence at the end of the ventricular 
systole. At this moment the semilunar valves at the orifices 
of the aorta and the pulmonary artery are closed, so that no 
blood can flow back from those vessels. The whole heart, 
however, is soft and distensible and yields readily to blood 
flowing into it from the pulmonary veins and the venae cavae; 
this passes on through the open mitral and tricuspid valves 
and fills up the dilating ventricles, as well as the auricles. As 
the ventricles fill, back currents are set up along their walls 
and these carry up the flaps of the valves so that by the end 
of the pause they are nearly closed. At this moment the au¬ 
ricles contract, and since this contraction commences at and 


WORKING OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 229 


narrows the months of the veins opening into them, and at 
the same time the blood in those vessels opposes some resist¬ 
ance to a back-flow into them, while the still flabby and 
dilating ventricles oppose much less resistance, the general 
result is that the contracting auricles send blood into the 
ventricles, and not back into the veins. At the same time the 
increased direct current into the ventricles produces a greater 
back current on the sides, which, when the auricles cease 
their contraction and the filled ventricles become tense and 
press on the blood inside them, completely closes the auriculo- 
ventricular valves. That this increased filling of the ventri¬ 
cles, due to auricular contractions, will close the valves may 
be seen easily in a sheep’s heart. If the auricles be carefully 
cut away from this so as to expose the mitral and tricuspid 
valves, and water be then poured from a little height into the 
ventricles, it will be seen that as these cavities are filled the 
valve-flaps are floated up and close the orifices. 

The auricular contraction now ceases and the ventricular 
commences. The blood in each ventricle is imprisoned be¬ 
tween the auriculo-ventricular valves behind and the semi¬ 
lunar valves in front. The former cannot yield on account 
of the cordae tendineae fixed to their edges: the semilunar 
valves, on the other hand, can open outwards from the ven¬ 
tricle and let the blood pass on, but they are kept tightly shut 
by the pressure of the blood on their other sides, just as the 
lock-gates of a canal are by the pressure of the water on 
them. In order to open the canal-gates water is let in or out 
of the lock until it stands at the same level on each side of 
them; but of course they might be forced open without this 
by applying sufficient power to overcome the higher water 
pressure on one side. It is in this latter way that the semi¬ 
lunar valves are opened. The contracting ventricle tightens 
its grip on the blood inside it and becomes rigid to the touch. 
As it squeezes harder and harder, at last the pressure on the 
blood within it becomes greater than the pressure exerted on 
the other side of the valves by the blood in the arteries, the flaps 
are forced open and the blood begins to pass out: the ventri¬ 
cle continues its contraction until it has obliterated its cavity 
and completely emptied itself; this total emptying appears, 
at least, to occur in the normally beating heart, but in some 
pathological conditions and under the influence of certain 
drugs the emptying of the ventricles is incomplete. After 


230 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the systole the ventricle commences to relax and blood imme¬ 
diately to flow back towards it from the highly stretched ar¬ 
teries. This return current, however, catches the pockets of 
the semilunar valves, drives them back and closes the valve 
so as to form an impassable barrier; and so the blood which 
has been forced out of either ventricle cannot flow directly 
back into it. 

Use of the Papillary Muscles. In order that the con¬ 
tracting ventricles may not force blood back into the auricles 
it is essential that the flaps of the mitral and tricuspid valves 
be maintained in position across the openings which they 
close, and be not pushed back into the auricles. At the com¬ 
mencement of the ventricular systole this is provided for by 
the cordae tendineae, which are of such a length as to keep 
the edges of the flaps in apposition, a position which is 
farther secured by the fact that each set of cordae tendineae 
(Fig. 92) radiating from a point in the ventricle, is not at¬ 
tached around the edges of one flap but on the contiguous 
edges of two flaps, and so tends to pull them together. But 
as the contracting ventricles shorten, the cordae tendineae, if 
directly fixed to their interior, would be slackened and the 
valve-flaps pushed up into the auricle. The little papillary 
muscles prevent this. Shortening as the ventricular systole 
proceeds, they keep the cordae taut and the valves closed. 

The mechanism is indeed even better working than this. 
The area of the valve-flaps is greater than is sufficient to 
stretch across the auriculo-ventricular orifice, so that when 
their edges are in apposition they form a cone projecting into 
the ventricle. Towards the ends of the systole the papillary 
muscles pull this cone down into the ventricular cavity so as 
to practically obliterate it and force out from it nearly every 
drop of blood. 

Sounds of the Heart. If the ear be placed on the chest 
over the region of the heart during life, two distinguishable 
sounds will be heard during each cardiac cycle. They are 
known respectively as the first and second sounds of the 
heart. The first is of lower pitch and lasts longer than the 
second and sharper sound: vocally their character may be 
tolerably imitated by the words lull, dup. The cause of the 
second sound is the closure, or, as one might say, the “ click¬ 
ing up,” of the semilunar valves, since it occurs at the 
moment of their closure and ceases if they be hooked back in 


WORKING OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 231 


a living animal. The origin of the first sound is still uncer¬ 
tain: it takes place during the ventricular systole and is 
probably due to vibrations of the tense ventricular wall at 
that time. It is not due, at least not entirely, to the auriculo- 
ventricular valves, since it may still be heard in a beating 
heart empty of blood, and in which there could be no closure 
or tension of those valves. In various forms of heart disease 
these sounds qre modified or cloaked by additional “ mur¬ 
murs” which arise when the cardiac orifices are roughened 
or narrowed or dilated, or the valves inefficient. By paying 
attention to the character of the new sound then heard, the 
exact period in the cardiac cycle at which it occurs, and the 
region of the chest-wall at which it is heard most distinctly, 
the physician can often get important information as to its 
cause. 

Diagram of the Events of a Cardiac Cycle. In the fol¬ 
lowing table the phenomena of the heart's beat are repre¬ 
sented with reference to the changes of form which are seen 
on an exposed working heart. Events in the same vertical 
column occur simultaneously; on the same horizontal line, 
from left to right, successively. 



Auricular 

Systole. 

Commence¬ 
ment of 
Ventricular 
Systole. 

Ventricular 

Systole. 

Cessation 
of Ven¬ 
tricular 
Systole. 

Pause. 

Auricles. 

Ventricles. 

Contracting 

and 

emptying. 
Dilating and 
filling. 

Dilating and 
filling. 

Contracting. 

Apex beat. 

Closed. 
Closed. 
First sound. 

Dilating and 
filling. 

Contracting 

and 

emptying. 

Dilating 
and filling. 

Diluting. 

Dilating 
and filling. 

Dilating 
and filling. 

Impulse - 

Auriculo-v >.tric 
uiar valves 
Semilunar valves 

CflllH l i < 

Closing. 

Closed. 

Closed. 

Open. 

Opening. 

Closing. 

Second 

sound. 

Open. 

Closed. 






Function of the Auricles. The ventricles have to do the 
work of pumping the blood through the blood-vessels. Ac¬ 
cordingly their walls are far thicker and more muscular than 
those of the auricles; and the left ventricle, which has to 
force the blood over the Body generally, is stouter than the 
right, which has only to send blood around the comparatively 
short pulmonary circuit. The circulation of the blood is in 
fact maintained by the ventricles, and we have to inquire 
what is the use of the auricles. Not unfrequently the heart's 























232 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


action is described as if the auricles first filled with blood and 
then contracted and filled the ventricles; and then the latter 
contracted and drove the blood into the arteries. From the 
account given above, however, it will be seen that the events 
are not accurately so represented, but that during all the 
pause blood flows on through the auricles into the ventricles, 
which latter are already nearly full when the auricles con¬ 
tract; this contraction merely completing their filling and 
finishing the closure of the auriculo-ventricular valves. The 
real use of the auricles is to afford a reservoir into which 
the veins may empty while the comparatively long-lasting 
ventricular contraction is taking place: they also largely 
control the amount of work done by the heart. 

If the heart consisted of the ventricles only, with valves 
at the points of entry and exit of the blood, the circulation 
could be maintained. During diastole the ventricle would 
fill from, the veins, and during systole empty into the arteries. 
But in order to accomplish this, during the systole the valves 
at the point of entry must be closed, or the ventricle would 
empty itself into the veins as well as into the arteries; and 
this closure would necessitate a great loss of time which 
riiight be utilized for feeding the pump. This is avoided by 
the auricles, which are really reservoirs at the end of the 
venous system, collecting blood when the ventricular pump is 
at work. When the ventricles relax, the blood entering the 
auricles flows on into them: but previously, during the T 3 ^- 
of the cardiac cycle occupied by the ventricular systole, the 
auricles have accumulated blood, and when they at last con¬ 
tract they send on into the ventricles this accumulation. 
Even were the flow from the veins stopped during the auric¬ 
ular contraction this would be of comparatively little conse¬ 
quence, since that event occupies so brief a time. But, al¬ 
though no doubt somewhat lessened, the emptying of the 
veins into the heart does not seem to be, in health, stopped 
while the auricle is contracting. For at that moment the 
ventricle is relaxing and receives the blood from the auricles 
under a less pressure than it enters the latter from the veins. 
The heart in fact consists of a couple of “ feed-pumps ”—the 
auricles—and a couple of “ force-pumps”—the ventricles; 
and so wonderfully perfect is the mechanism that the supply 
to the feed-pumps is never stopped. The auricles are never 
empty, being supplied all the time of their contraction, which 


WORKING OF THE HEART AND BLOOD - VESSELS. 233 


is never so great as to obliterate their cavities; while the ven¬ 
tricles contain no blood at the end of their systole. 

The auricles also govern to a certain extent the amount 
of work done by the ventricles. These latter contract with 
more than sufficient force to completely drive out all the 
blood contained in them. If the auricles contract more 
powerfully and empty themselves more completely at any 
given time, the ventricles will contain more blood at the com¬ 
mencement of their systole, and will have pumped out more 
at its end. Now, as we shall see in Chapter XVIII, the con¬ 
traction of the auricles is under the control of the nervous 
system, and through the auricles the whole work of the 
heart. In fact the ventricles represent the brute force con¬ 
cerned in maintaining the circulation, while the auricles are 
part of a highly-developed co-ordinating mechanism, by 
which the rate of the blood-flow is governed according to 
the needs of the whole Body at the time. 

The Work Done by the Heart. This can be calculated 
with approximate correctness. At each systole each ven¬ 
tricle sends out the same quantity of blood—about 180 grams 
(6.3 ounces); the pressure exerted by the blood in the aorta 
against the semilunar valves, and which the ventricle has to 
overcome, is about that which would be exerted on the same 
surface by a column of mercury 200 millimeters (8 inches) 
high. The left ventricle therefore drives out, seventy times 
in a minute, 180 grams (6.3 ounces) of blood against this 
pressure. Since the specific gravity of mercury is 12.5 and 
that of blood may for practical purposes be taken as 1, the 
work of each stroke of the ventricle is equivalent to raising 
180 grams (6.3 ounces) of blood 200 X 12.5 = 2500 millim. 
(8.2 feet); or one gram 450 meters (one ounce 51.66 feet); 
or one kilogram 0.45 meter (one lb. 3.23 feet). Work is 
measured by the amount of energy needed to raise a definite 
weight a given distance against gravity at the earth's surface, 
the unit, called a kilo gravimeter, being either that necessary 
to raise one kilogram one meter, or, called a foot-pound, that 
necessary to raise one pound one foot. Expressed thus the 
work of the left ventricle in one minute, when the heart's 
rate is seventy strokes in that time, is 0.45 X 70 = 31 50 kilo- 
grammeters (3.23 X 70 = 226.1 foot-pounds); in one hour it 
is 31.50 X 60 = 1890 kilogrammeters (226.1 X 60 = 13,566 
foot-pounds); and in twenty-four hours 1890 X 24 = 45,360 


234 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


kilogrammeters (325,584 foot-pounds). The pressure in the 
pulmonary artery against which the right ventricle works is- 
about i of that in the aorta; hence this ventricle in twenty- 
four hours will do one third as much work as the left, or 
15,120 kilogrammeters (108,528 foot-pounds), and adding 
this to the amount done by the left, we get as the total work 
of the ventricles in a day the immense amount of 60,480 
kilogrammeters (434,112 foot-pounds). If a man weighing 
75 kilograms (165 lbs.) climbed up a mountain 806 meters 
(2644 feet) high his skeletal muscles would probably be 
greatly fatigued at the end of the ascent, and yet in lifting 
his Body that height they would only have performed the 
amount of work that the ventricles of the heart do daily 
without fatigue. 

The Plow of the Blood Outside the Heart. The blood 
leaves the heart intermittently and not in a regular stream, 
a quantity being forced out at each systole of the ventricles: 
before it reaches the capillaries, however, this rhythmic 
movement is transformed into a steady flow, as may readily 
be seen by examining under the microscope thin transparent 
parts of various animals, as the web of a frog’s foot, a mouse’s 
ear, or the tail of a small fish. In consequence of the steadi¬ 
ness with which the capillaries supply the veins the flow in 
these is also unaffected, directly, by each beat of the heart; 
if a vein be cut the blood wells out uniformly, while a cut 
artery spurts out not only with much greater force, but in jets 
which are much more powerful at regular intervals corre¬ 
sponding with the systoles of the ventricles. 

The Circulation of the Blood as Seen in the Frog’s Web. 
There is no more fascinating or instructive phenomenon than 
the circulation of the blood as seen with the microscope in 
the thin membrane between the toes of a frog’s hind limb. 
Upon focusing beneath the epidermis a network of minute 
arteries, veins, and capillaries, with the blood flowing through 
them, comes into view (Fig. 91). The arteries, a , are 
readily recognized by the fact that the flow in them is fastest 
and from larger to smaller branches. The latter are seen 
ending in capillaries, which form networks, the channels of 
which are all nearly equal in size. While in the veins aris¬ 
ing from the capillaries the flow is from smaller to larger 
trunks, and slower than in the arteries, but faster than in the 
capillaries. 


WORKING OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 235 


The reason of the slower flow of the capillaries is that 
their united area is considerably greater than that of the 
arteries supplying them, so that the same quantity of blood 
flowing through them in a given time has a wider channel 
to flow in and moves more slowly. The area of the veins is 
smaller than that of the capillaries but greater than that of 
the arteries, and hence the rate of movement in them is also 
intermediate. Almost always when an artery divides, the 
area of its branches is greater than that of the main trunk, 
and so the arterial current becomes slower and slower from 
the heart onwards. In the veins, on the other hand, the area 
of a trunk formed by the union of two or more branches is 
less than that of the branches together, and the flow becomes 
quicker and quicker towards the heart. But even at the 
heart the united cross-sections of the veins entering the auri¬ 
cles are greater than those of the arteries leaving the ventri¬ 
cles, so that, since as much blood returns to the heart in a 
given time as leaves it, the rate of the current in the pul¬ 
monary veins and the venae cavae is less than in the pulmonary 
artery and aorta. We may represent the vascular system as 
a double cone, widening from the ventricles to the capillaries 
and narrowing from the latter to the auricles. Just as water 
forced in at a narrow end of this would flow quickest there 
and slowest at the widest part, so the blood flows quickest in 
the aorta and slowest in the capillaries, which taken together 
form a much wider channel. 

The Axial Current and the Inert Layer. If a small 

artery in the frog’s web be closely examined it will be seen 
that the rate of flow is not the same in all parts of it. In the 
centre is a very rapid current carrying along all the red cor¬ 
puscles and known as the axial stream, while near the wall 
of the vessel the flow is much slower, as indicated by the rate 
at which the pale blood-corpuscles are carried- along in it. 
This is a purely physical phenomenon. If any liquid be for¬ 
cibly driven through a fine tube which it wets, water for in¬ 
stance through a glass tube, the outermost layer of the liquid 
will remain motionless in contact with the tube; the next 
layer of molecules will move a little, the next faster still; 
and so on until a rapid current is found in the centre. If 
solid bodies, as powdered sealing-wax, be suspended in the 
water, these will all be carried on in the central faster cur¬ 
rent or axial stream , just as the red corpuscles are in the 


236 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


artery. The white corpuscles, partly because of their less 
specific gravity, and partly because of their sometimes irregu¬ 
lar form, due to amoeboid movements, get frequently pushed 
out of the axial current, so that many of them are found in 
the inert layer. 

Internal Friction. It follows from the above-stated facts 
that there is no noticeable friction between the blood and 
the lining of the vessel through which it flows: since the 
outermost blood-layer in contact with the wall of the vessel is 
changed only by diffusion. There is great friction between 
the different concentric layers of the liquid, since each of 
them is moving at a different rate from that in contact with 
it on each side. This form of friction is known in hydro¬ 
dynamics as “ internal friction,” and it is of great importance 
in the circulation of the blood. Internal friction increases 
very fast as the calibre of the tube through which the liquid 
flows diminishes: so that with the same rate of flow it is dis¬ 
proportionately much greater in a small tube than in a larger 
one. Hence a given quantity of liquid forced in a minute 
through one large tube would experience much less resistance 
from internal friction than if sent in the same time through 
four or five smaller tubes, the united transverse sections ol 
which were together equal to that of the single larger one. In 
the blood-vessels the increased total area, and consequently 
slower flow, in the smaller channels partly counteracts this 
increase of internal friction, but only to a comparatively 
slight extent; so that the internal friction, and consequently 
the resistance to the blood-flow, is far greater in the capil¬ 
laries than in the small arteries, and in the small arteries than 
in the large ones. Practically we may regard the arteries as 
tubes ending in a sponge: the united areas of all the channels 
in the latter might be considerably larger than that of the 
supplying tubes, but the friction to be overcome in the flow 
through them would be much greater. 

The Conversion of the Intermittent into a Continuous 
Flow. Since the heart sends blood into the aorta intermit¬ 
tently, we have still to inquire how it is that the flow in the 
capillaries is continuous. In the larger arteries it is not, 
since we can feel them dilating as the “pulse” on applying 
the finger over the radial artery at the wrist, or over the tem¬ 
poral artery on the side of the brow. 

The first explanation which suggests itself is that since 


WORKING OF THE HEART AND BLOOD-VESSELS. 237 


the capacity of the blood-vessels increases from the heart to 
the capillaries, an acceleration of the flow during the ven¬ 
tricular contraction which might be very manifest in the 
vessels near the heart would become less and less obvious in 
the more distant vessels. But if this were so, then when the 
blood was collected again from the wide capillary sponge into 
the great veins near the heart, which together are but little 
bigger than the aorta, we ought to find a pulse, but we do 
not: the venous pulse which sometimes occurs having quite a 
different cause, being due to a back-flow from the auricles, or 
a checking of the on-flow into them, during the cardiac sys¬ 
tole. The rhythm of the flow caused by the heart is therefore 
not merely cloaked in the small arteries and capillaries, but 
abolished in them. 

We can, however, readily contrive conditions outside the 
Body under which an intermittent supply is transformed into 
a continuous flow. Suppose we 
have two vessels, A and B (Fig. 

97). containing water and con¬ 
nected below in two ways: 
through the tube a on which 
there is a pump provided with 
valves so that it can only drive 
liqu id from A to B ; and through 
b, which may be left wide open 
or narrowed by the clamp c, at 
will. If the apparatus be left 
at rest the water will lie at the 
same level, d , in each vessel. If now we work the pump, at 
each stroke a certain amount of water will be conveyed from 
A to B, and as a result of the lowering of the level of liquid 
in A and its rise in B, there will be immediately a return 
flow from B to A through the tube b. A, in these circum¬ 
stances, would represent the venous system, from which the 
heart constantly takes blood to pump it into B, representing 
the arterial system; and b would represent the capillary ves¬ 
sels through which the return flow takes place; but, so far, 
we should have as intermittent a flow through the capillaries, 
b, as through the heart-pump, a. Now imagine b to be nar¬ 
rowed at one point so as to oppose resistance to the back-flow, 
while the pump goes on working steadily. The result will be 
an accumulation of water in B, and a fall of its level in A. 










238 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


But the more the difference of level in the two vessels in¬ 
creases, the greater is the force tending to drive water back 
through b to A, and more will flow back, under the greater 
difference of pressure, in a given time, until at last, when the 
water in B has reached a certain level, d\ and that in A has 
correspondingly fallen to d n , the current through b will carry 
back in one minute just so much water as the pump sends the 
other way, and this back-flow will be nearly constant; it will 
not depend directly upon the strokes of the pump, but upon 
the head of water accumulated in B; which head of water 
will, it is true, be slightly increased at each stroke of the 
pump, but the increase will be very small compared with the 
whole driving force, and its influence will be inappreciable. 
We thus gain the idea that an incomplete impediment to the 
flow from the arteries to the veins (from B to A in the dia¬ 
gram); such as is afforded by internal friction in the capil¬ 
laries, may bring about conditions which will lead to a steady 
flow along the latter vessels. 

But in the arterial system there can be no accumulation of 
blood at a higher level than that in the veins, such as is sup¬ 
posed in the above apparatus; and we must next consider if 
the “ head of water” can be replaced by some other form of 
driving force. It is in fact replaced by the elasticity of the 
large arteries. Suppose an elastic bag instead of the vessel B 
connected with the pump “a” If there be no resistance to 
the back-flow the current through b will be discontinuous. 
But if resistance be interposed, then the elastic bag will be¬ 
come distended, since the pump sends in a given time more 
liquid into it than it passes back through b. But the more it 
becomes distended the more will the bag squeeze the liquid 
inside and the faster will it send that back to A, until at last 
its squeeze is so powerful that each minute or two or five min¬ 
utes it sends back into A as much as it receives. Thenceforth 
the back-flow through b will be practically constant, being im¬ 
mediately dependent upon the elastic reaction of the bag, and 
only indirectly upon the action of the pump which keeps it 
distended. Such a state of things represents very closely the 
phenomena occurring in the blood-vessels. The highly elastic 
large arteries are kept stretched with blood by the heart; and 
the reaction of their elastic walls, steadily squeezing on the 
blood in them, forces it continuously through the small arte¬ 
ries and capillaries. The steady flow in the latter depends 


WORKING OF THE HEART AND BLOOD - VESSELS. 239 


thus on two factors: first, the elasticity of the large arteries; 
and, secondly, the resistance to their emptying, dependent 
upon internal friction in the small arteries and the capillaries, 
which calls into play the elasticity of the large vessels. Were 
the capillary resistance or the arterial elasticity absent the 
blood-flow in the capillaries would be rhythmic. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


ARTERIAL PRESSURE. THE PULSE. 

Weber’s Schema. It is clear from the statements made 
in the last chapter that it is the pressure exerted by the elas¬ 
tic arteries upon the blood inside them which keeps up the 
flow through the capillaries, the heart serving to keep the 
big arteries tightly filled and so to call the elastic reaction of 
their walls into play. The whole circulation depends prima¬ 
rily, of course, upon the beat of the heart, but this only in¬ 
directly governs the capillary flow, and since the latter is the 
aim of the whole vascular apparatus, it is of great importance 
to know all about arterial pressure; not only how great it is 
on the average, but how it is altered in different vessels in 
various circumstances so as to make the flow through the 
capillaries of a given part greater or less according to circum¬ 
stances ; for, as blushing and pallor of the face (which fre¬ 
quently occur without any change in the skin elsewhere) 
prove, the quantity of blood flowing through a given part is 
not always the same, nor is it always increased or diminished 
in all parts of the Body at the same time. Most of what we 
know about arterial pressure has been ascertained by experi¬ 
ments made upon the lower animals, from which deductions 
are then made concerning what happens in man, since An¬ 
atomy shows that the circulatory organs are arranged upon 
the same plan in all the mammalia. A great deal can, how¬ 
ever, be learnt by studying the flow of liquids through ordi¬ 
nary elastic tubes. Suppose we have a set of such (Fig. 98) 
supplied at one point with a pump, c , possessing valves of 
entry and exit which open only in the direction indicated by 
the arrows, and that the whole system is slightly overfilled 
with liquid so that its elastic walls are slightly stretched. 
These will in consequence press upon the liquid inside them 
and the amount of this pressure will be indicated by the 
gauges; so long as the pump is at rest it will be the same 
everywhere (and therefore equalgnthe gauges on B and A), 

240 


ARTERIAL PRESSURE. THE PULSE. 


241 


since liquid in a set of horizontal tubes communicating freely, 
as these do at D, always distributes itself so that the pressure 
upon it is everywhere the same. Let the pump c now con¬ 
tract once, and then dilate: during the contraction it will 
empty itself into B and during the dilatation fill itself from 
A. Consequently the pressure in B , indicated by the gauge 
x, will rise and that in A will fall. But very rapidly the 
liquid will redistribute itself from B to A through D, until 
it again exists everywhere under the same pressure. Every 


f 



■X 


Fig. 98.—Diagram of Weber’s Schema. 


time the pump works there will occur a similar series of 
phenomena, and there will be a disturbance of equilibrium 
causing a wave to flow round the tubing; but there will be 
no steady maintenance of a pressure on the side B greater 
than that in A. Now let the upper tube D be closed so that 
the liquid to get from B to A must flow through the narrow 
lower tubes D ', which oppose considerable resistance to its 
passage on account of their frequent branchings and the 
great internal friction in them; then if the pump works fre¬ 
quently enough there will be produced and maintained in B 
a pressure considerably higher than that in A, which may 
even become negative. If, for example, the pump works 60 
times a minute and at each stroke takes 180 cubic centi¬ 
meters of liquid (6 ounces) from A and drives it into B , the 
quantity sent in at the first stroke will not (on account of the 
resistance to its flow offered by the small branched tubes), 
have all got back into A before the next stroke takes place, 
sending 180 more cubic centimeters (6 oz.) into B. Conse¬ 
quently at each stroke B will become more and more dis¬ 
tended and A more and more emptied, and the gauge x will 


242 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


indicate a much higher pressure than that on A. As B is 
more stretched, however, it squeezes harder upon its con¬ 
tents, until at last a time comes when this squeeze is power¬ 
ful enough to force through the small tubes just 180 cubic 
centimeters (6 oz.) in a second. Then further accumulation 
in B ceases. The pump sends into it 10,800 cubic centi¬ 
meters (360 ounces) in a minute at one end and it squeezes 
out exactly that amount in the same time from its other end; 
and so long as the pump works steadily the pressure in B 
will not rise, nor that in A fall, any more. But under such 
circumstances the flow through the small tubes will be nearly 
constant since it depends upon the difference in pressure pre¬ 
vailing between B and A, and only indirectly upon the pump 
which serves simply to keep the pressure high in B and low 
in A. At each stroke of the pump it is true there will be 
a slight increase of pressure in B due to the fresh 180 cub. 
cent. (6 oz.) forced into it, but this increase will be but a 
small fraction of the total pressure and so have but an in¬ 
significant influence upon the rate of flow through the small 
connecting tubes. 

Arterial Pressure. The condition of things just de¬ 
scribed represents very closely the phenomena presented in 
the blood-vascular system, in which the ventricles of the 
heart, with their auriculo-ventricular and semilunar valves, 
represent the pump, the smallest arteries and the capillaries 
the resistance at D f , the large arteries the elastic tube B, and 
the veins the tube A. The ventricles constantly receiving 
blood through the auricles from the veins, send it into the 
arteries, which find a difficulty in emptying themselves 
through the capillaries, and so blood accumulates in them 
until the elastic reaction of the stretched arteries is able to 
squeeze in a minute through the capillaries just so much 
blood as the left ventricle pumps into the aorta, and the right 
into the pulmonary artery, in the same time. Accordingly in 
a living animal a pressure-gauge connected with an artery 
shows a much higher pressure than one connected with a vein, 
and this persisting difference of pressure, only increased by a 
small fraction of the whole at each heart-beat, brings about 
a steady flow from the arteries to the veins. The heart keeps 
the arteries stretched and the stretched arteries maintain the 
flow through the capillaries, and the constancy of the current 
in them depends on two factors: (1) the resistance experi- 


ARTERIAL PRESSURE. THE PULSE. 


243 


enced by the blood in its flow from the ventricles to the 
veins, and (2) the elasticity of the larger arteries which allows 
the blood to accumulate in them under a high pressure, in 
consequence of this resistance. 

The Arterial Pressure. This cannot be directly meas¬ 
ured with accuracy in man, but from measurements made on 
other animals it is calculated that in the human aorta its 
average is equal to that of a column of mercury 200 milli¬ 
meters (8 inches) high. During the systole it rises about 5 
millimeters inch) above this and during the pause falls the 
same amount below it. The pressure in the venae cavae on the 
other hand is often negative, the blood being, to use ordinary 
language, often “ sucked” out of them into the heart, and it 
rarely rises above 5 millimeters inch) of mercury except 
under conditions (such as powerful muscular effort accom¬ 
panied by holding the breath) which force blood on into the 
venae cavae and, by impeding the pulmonary circulation, in¬ 
terfere with the emptying of the right auricle. Hence to 
maintain the flow from the aorta to the vena cava we have 
an average difference of pressure equal to 200 — 5 — 195 
millimeters (7f inches) of mercury, rising to 205 — 5 = 200 
mm. (8 inches) during the cardiac systole and falling to 
195 — 5 = 190 mm. (7f inches) during the pause; but the 
slight alterations, only about °f the whole difference of 
aortic and vena-cava pressures which maintain the blood- 
flow, are too small to cause appreciable changes in the rate of 
the current in the capillaries. The pressure on the blood in 
the pulmonary artery is about £ of that in the aorta. 

Since the blood flows from the aorta to its branches and 
from these to the capillaries and thence to the veins, and 
liquids in a set of continuous tubes flow from points of 
greater to those of less pressure, it is clear that the blood- 
pressure must constantly diminish from the aorta to the 
right auricle; and similarly from the pulmonary artery to 
the left auricle. At any point, in fact, the pressure is pro¬ 
portionate to the resistance in front, and since the farther 
the blood has gone the less of this, due to impediments at 
branchings and to internal friction, it has to overcome in 
finishing its round, the pressure on the blood diminishes as 
we follow it from the aorta to the venae cavae. In the larger 
arteries the fall of pressure is gradual and small, since the 
amount of resistance met with in the flow through them is 


244 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


but little. In the small arteries and capillaries the resistance 
overcome and left behind is (on account of the great internal 
friction due to their small calibre) very great, and conse¬ 
quently the fall of pressure between the medium-sized arteries 
and the veins is rapid and considerable. 

Modifications of Arterial Pressure by Changes in the 
Rate of the Heart’s Beat. A little consideration will make 
it clear that the pressure prevailing at any time in a given 
artery depends on two things—the rate at which the vessel 
is filled, i.e., upon the amount of work done by the heart; 
and the ease or difficulty with which it is emptied, that is, 
upon the resistance in front. A third factor has to be taken 
into account in some cases; namely, that when the muscular 
coats of the small arteries contract the local capacity of the 
vascular system is diminished, and has to be compensated for 
by greater distention elsewhere, and vice versa. This would 
of itself of course bring about changes in the pressure ex¬ 
erted on the contained liquid, but for the present it may be 
left out of consideration. Returning to the system of elastic 
tubes with a pump represented in Fig. 98, let us suppose the 
pump to be driving as before 10,800 cub. cent. (360 oz.) per 
minute into the tubes B, and that these latter are so dis¬ 
tended that they drive out just that quantity in the same 
time. Under such conditions the pressure at any given 
point in B will remain constant, apart from the small varia¬ 
tions dependent upon each stroke of the pump. Now, how¬ 
ever, let the latter, while still sending in 180 cub. cent. 
(6 oz.) at each stroke, work 80 instead of 60 times a minute 
and so send in that time 180 X 80 = 14,400 cub. cent. 
(480 oz.) instead of the former quantity. This will lead to 
an accumulation in B , since its squeeze is only sufficient, 
against the resistance opposed^to it, to send out 10,800 cub. 
cent. (360 oz.) in a minute. B consequently will become 
more stretched and the pressure in it will rise. As this 
takes place, however, it will press more powerfully on its 
contents until at last its distention is such that its elastic 
reaction is able to force out in a minute through the small 
tubes D , 14,400 cub. cent. (480 oz.) Thenceforth, so long 
as the pump beats with the same force and at the same rate 
and the peripheral resistance remains the same, the mean 
pressure in B will neither rise nor fall— B sending into A in 
a minute as much as c takes from it, and we would have a 


ARTERIAL PRESSURE. THE PULSE. 


245 


steady condition of tilings with a higher mean pressure in B 
than before. 

On the other hand, if the pump begins to work more 
slowly while the resistance remains the same, it is clear that 
the mean pressure in B must fall. If, for example, the 
pump works only forty times a minute and so sends in that 
time. 180 X 40 = 7200 cub. cent. (240 oz.) into B, which is 
so stretched that it is squeezing out 10,800 cub. cent. (360 
oz.), in that time, it is clear that B will gradually empty 
itself and its walls become less stretched and the pressure in 
it fall. As this takes place, however, it will force less liquid 
in a minute through the small tubes, until at last a pressure is 
reached at which the squeeze of B only sends out 7200 cub. 
cent. (340 oz.) in a minute; and then the fall of pressure will 
cease and a steady one will be maintained, but lower than 
before. 

Applying the same reasoning to the vascular system, we 
see that (the peripheral resistance remaining unaltered), if the 
heart's force remains the same but its rate increases, arterial 
pressure will rise to a new level, while a slowing of the heart's 
beat will bring about a fall of pressure. 

Modifications of Arterial Pressure Dependent on 
Changes in the Force of the Heart’s Beat. Returning 
again to Fig. 98: suppose that, while the rate of the pump 
remains the same, its power alters so that each time it sends 
200 cub. cent. (6.6 oz.) instead of 180 (6 oz.) and so in a 
minute 12,000 cub. cent (396 oz.) instead of 10,800 (360 oz.) 
—the quantity which B is stretched enough to squeeze out 
in that time. Water will in consequence accumulate in B 
until it becomes stretched enough to squeeze out 12,000 cub. 
cent. (396 oz.) in a minute, and then a steady pressure at a 
new and higher level will be maintained. On the other 
hand if the pump, still beating sixty times a minute, works 
more feebly so as to send out only 160 cub. cent. (5.6 oz.) at 
each stroke, then B , squeezing out at first more than it 
receives in a given time, will gradually empty itself until it 
only presses hard enough upon its contents to force 160 X 60 
= 9600 cub. cent. (336 oz.) out in a minute. 

Similarly, if while the resistance in the small arteries and 
capillaries remains the same and the heart's rate unchanged 
the stroke of the latter alters, so that at each beat it sends 


246 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


more blood out than it did previously, then arterial pressure 
will rise; while if the heart beats more feebly it will fall. 

Modifications of Arterial Pressure by Changes in the 
Peripheral Resistance. Let the pump c in Fig. 98 still 
work steadily sending 10,800 cub. cent. (360 oz.) per minute 
into B and the resistance increase, it is clear arterial pressure 
must rise. For B is only stretched enough to squeeze out in 
a minute the above quantity of liquid against the original re¬ 
sistance, and cannot at first send out that quautity against the 
greater. Liquid will consequently accumulate in it until at 
last it becomes stretched enough to send out 10,800 cub. 
cent. (360 cubic oz.) in a minute through the small tubes, in 
spite of the greater resistance to be overcome. A new mean 
pressure at a higher level will then be established. If, on the 
contrary, the resistance diminishes while the pump’s work 
remains the same, then B will at first squeeze out in a minute 
more than it receives, until finally its elastic pressure is 
reduced to the point at which its receipts and losses balance, 
and a new and lower mean pressure will be established in B. 

Similarly in the vascular system, increase of the peripheral 
resistance by narrowing of the small arteries will increase 
arterial pressure in all parts nearer the heart, while dilata¬ 
tion of the small arteries will have the contrary effect. 

Summary. We find then that arterial pressure at any 
moment is dependent upon—(1) the rate of the heart’s beat; 
(2) the quantity of blood forced into the arteries at each 
beat; (3) the calibre of the smaller vessels. All of these, 
and consequently the capillary circulation which depends 
upon arterial pressure, are under the control of the nervous 
system (see Chap. XVII.). 

The Pulse. When the left ventricle contracts it forces a 
certain amount of blood into the aorta, which is already dis¬ 
tended and on account of the resistance in front cannot 
empty itself as fast as the contracting ventricle fills it. As 
a consequence its elastic walls yield still more—it enlarges 
both transversely and longitudinally and if exposed in a 
living animal can be seen and felt to pulsate, swelling out at 
each systole of the heart, and shrinking and getting rid of 
the excess during the pause. A similar phenomenon can be 
observed in all the other large arteries, for just as the con¬ 
tracting ventricle fills the aorta faster than the latter empties 
(the whole period of diastole and systole being required by 


ARTERIAL PRESSURE. THE PULSE. 


247 


the aorta to pass on the blood sent in during systole), so the 
increased tension in the aorta immediately after the cardiac 
contraction drives on some of its contents into its branches, 
and fills these faster than they are emptying, and so causes 
a dilatation of them also, which only gradually disappears as 
the aortic tension falls before the next systole. Hence after 
each beat of the heart there is a sensible dilatation of 
all the larger arteries, known as the pulse , which becomes 
less and less marked at points on the smaller branches 
farther from the heart, but which in health can readily be 
recognized on any artery large enough to be felt by the 
finger through the skin, etc. The radial artery near the 
wrist, for example, will always be felt tense by the finger, 
since it is kept overfilled by the heart in the way already de¬ 
scribed. But after each heart-beat it becomes more rigid 
and dilates a little, the increased distension and rigidity 
gradually disappearing as the artery passes on the excess of 
blood before the next heart-beat. The pulse is then a wave 
of increased pressure started by the ventricular systole, ra¬ 
diating from the semilunar valves over the arterial system, 
and gradually disappearing in the smaller branches. In the 
aorta the pulse is most marked, for the resistance there to 
the transmission onwards of the blood sent in by the heart is 
greatest, and the elastic tube in which it consequently accu¬ 
mulates is shortest, and so the increase of pressure and the 
dilatation caused are considerable. The aorta, however, 
gradually squeezes out the excess blood into its branches, and 
so this becomes distributed over a wider area, and these 
branches having less resistance in front find less and less diffi¬ 
culty in passing it on; consequently the pulse-wave becomes 
less and less conspicuous and finally altogether disappears be¬ 
fore the capillaries are reached, the excess of liquid in the 
whole arterial system after a ventricular systole being too 
small to sensibly raise the mean pressure once it has been 
widely distributed over the elastic vessels, which is the case 
by the time the wave has reached the small branches which 
supply the capillaries. 

The pulse-wave travels over the arterial system at the rate 
of about 9 metres (29.5 feet) in a second, commencing at the 
wrist 0.159 second, and in the posterior tibial artery at the 
ankle 0.193 second, after the ventricular systole. The blood 
itself does not of course travel as fast as the pulse-wave, for 


248 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


that quantity sent into the aorta at each heart-beat does not 
immediately rush on over the whole arterial system, but by 
raising the local pressure causes the vessel to squeeze out 
faster than before some of the blood it already contains, and 
this entering its branches raises the pressure in them and 
causes them to more quickly fill their branches and raise the 
pressure in them; the pulse-wave or wave of increased press¬ 
ure is transmitted in this way much faster than any given 
portion of the blood. How the wave of increased pressure 
and the liquid travel at different rates may be made clearer 
perhaps by picturing what would happen if liquid were 
pumped into one end of an already full elastic tube, closed at 
the other end. At the closed end of the tube a dilatation and 
increased tension would be felt immediately after each stroke 
of the pump, although the liquid pumped in at the other end 
would have remained about its point of entry; it would cause 
the pulsation not by flowing along the tube itself, but by giv¬ 
ing a push to the liquid already in it. If instead of absolutely 
closing the distal end of the tube one brought about a state 
of things more nearly resembling that found in the arteries 
by allowing it to empty itself against a resistance, say through 
a narrow opening, the phenomena observed would not be es¬ 
sentially altered; the increase of pressure would travel along 
the distended tube far faster than the liquid itself. 

The pulse being dependent on the heart’s systole, “ feeling 
the pulse” of course primarily gives a convenient means of 
counting the rate of beat of that organ. To the skilled touch, 
however, it may tell a great deal more, as for example whether 
it is a readily compressible or “soft pulse” showing a low ar¬ 
terial pressure, or tense and rigid (“a hard pulse”) indicative 
of high arterial pressure, and so on. In adults the normal 
pulse rate may vary from sixty-five to seventy-five, the most 
common number being seventy-two. In the same individual 
it is faster when standing than when sitting, and when sitting 
than when lying down. Any exercise increases its rate tem¬ 
porarily, and so does excitement; a sick person’s pulse should 
not therefore be felt when he is nervous or excited (as the 
physician knows when he tries first to get his patient calm 
and confident), as it is then difficult to draw correct conclu¬ 
sions from it. In children the pulse is quicker than in adults, 
and in old age slower than in middle life. 

The Kate of the Blood-Flow. As the vascular system 


ARTERIAL PRESSURE. THE PULSE. 


249 


becoii.es more capacious from the aorta to the capillaries the 
rate of flow in it becomes proportionately slower, and as the 
total area of the channels diminishes again from the capilla¬ 
ries to the venae cavae, so does the rate of flow quicken, just 
as a river current slackens when it spreads out, and flows 
faster where it is confined to a narrower channel; a fact taken 
advantage of in the construction of Eads’ jetties at the mouth 
of the Mississippi, the object of which is to make the water 
flow in a narrower channel and so with a more rapid current 
in that part of the river. Actual measurements as to the rate 
of flow in the arteries cannot be mado on man, but from ex¬ 
periments on lower animals it is calculated that in the human 
carotid the blood flows about 400 millimetres (16 inches) in a'f 
second. In the capillaries the current travels only from 0.5 
to 0.75 mm. (-fa to •gV inch) in a second. The total time 
taken by a portion of blood in making a complete circulation 
has been measured by injecting some easily detected sub¬ 
stance into an artery on one side of the body and noting the 
time which elapses before it can be found in a corresponding 
vein on the opposi e side. In dogs this time is 15 seconds, 
and it is calculated for man at about 23 seconds. Of this 
total time about half a second is spent in the systemic and 
another half second in the pulmonary capillaries, as each por¬ 
tion of blood on its course from the last artery to the first 
vein passes through a length of capillary which on the aver¬ 
age is 0.5 mm. (- fa inch). The rate of flow in the great veins 
is about 100 mm. (4 inches) in a second, but is subject to con- 1 
siderable variations dependent on the respiratory and other 
movements of the Body; in the small veins it is much slower. 

Secondary Causes of the Circulation. While the heart’s 
beat is the great driving force of the circulation, certain other 
things help more or less—viz., gravity, compression of the 
veins, and aspiration of the thorax. All of them are, how¬ 
ever, quite subsidiary; experiment on the dead Body shows 
that the injection of whipped blood into the aorta under a 
less force than that exerted by the left ventricle during life 
is more than sufficient to drive it round and back by the venae 
cavae. Not infrequently the statement is made in books that, 
probably, the systemic capillaries have an attractive force for 
arterial blood and the pulmonary capillaries for venous blood, 
but there is not the slightest evidence of the correctness of 
such a supposition, nor any necessity for making it. 



250 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The Influence of Gravity. Under ordinary circum¬ 
stances this may be neglected, since in parts of the Body 
below the level of the heart it will assist the flow in the ar-. 
teries and impede it equally in the veins, while the reverse 
is the case in the upper parts of the Body. In certain cases, 
however, it is well to bear these points in mind. A part 
“congested” or gorged with blood should if possible be raised 
so as to make the back-flow in its veins easier; and sometimes 
when the heart is acting feebly it may be able to drive blood 
along arteries in which gravity helps, but not otherwise. Ac¬ 
cordingly in a tendency to fainting it is best to lie down, and 
make it easier for the heart to send blood up to the brain, 
bloodlessness of which is the cause of the loss of consciousness 
in a fainting-fit. In fact, so long as the breathing continues, 
the aspiration of the thorax will keep up the venous flow (see 
below), while, in the circumstances supposed, a slight dimi¬ 
nution in the resistance opposed to the arterial flow may be 
of importance. The head of a person who has fainted should 
accordingly never be raised until he has undoubtedly recov¬ 
ered, a fact rarely borne in mind by spectators, w’ho commonly 
rush at once to lift any one whom they see fall in the street 
or elsewhere. 

The Influence of Transient Compression of the Veins. 

The valves of the veins being so disposed as to permit only 
a flow towards the heart, when external pressure empties a 
vein it assists the circulation. Continuous pressure, as by 
a tight garter, is of course bad, since it checks all subsequent 
flow through the vessel; but intermittent pressure, such as is 
exerted on many veins by muscles in the ordinary move¬ 
ments of the Body, acts as a pump to force on the blood in 
them. 

The valves of the veins have another use in diminishing 
the pressure on the lower part of those vessels in many 
regions. If, for instance, there were no valves in the long 
saphenous vein of the leg the considerable weight of the 
column of blood in it, which in the erect position would be 
about a metre (39 inches) high, would press on the lower part 
of the vessel. But each set of valves in it carries the weight 
of the column of blood between it and the next set of valves 
above, and relieves parts below, and so the weight of the col¬ 
umn of blood is distributed and does not all bear on any one 
point. 


ARTERIAL PRESSURE. THE PULSE. 


251 


Aspiration of the Thorax. Whenever a breath is drawn 
the pressure of the air on the vessels inside the chest is di¬ 
minished, while that on the other vessels of the Body is un¬ 
affected. In consequence blood tends to flow into the chest. 
It cannot, however, flow back from the arteries on account of 
the semilunar valves of the aorta, but it can readily be pressed, 
or in common language “sucked,” into the great veins close 
to the heart and into the right auricle of the latter. The 
details of this action must be omitted until the respiratory 
mechanism has been considered. All parts of the pulmonary 
circuit being within the thorax, the respiratory movements do 
not directly influence it, except in so far as the distention or 
collapse of the lungs alters the calibre of their vessels. 

The considerable influence of the respiratory movements 
upon the venous circulation can be readily observed. In 
thin persons the jugular vein in the neck can often be seen 
to empty rapidly and collapse during inspiration, and fill up 
in a very noticeable way during expiration, exhibiting a 
sort of venous pulse. Every one, too, knows that by making 
a violent and prolonged expiration, as exhibited for example 
by a child with whooping-cough, the flow in all the veins of 
the head and neck may be checked, causing them to swell up 
and hinder the capillary circulation until the person becomes 
“ black in the face,” from the engorgement of the small ves¬ 
sels with dark-colored venous blood. 

In diseases of the tricuspid valve another form of venous 
pulse is often seen in the superficial veins of the neck, since 
at each contraction of the right ventricle some blood is driven 
back through the right auricle into the veins. 

Proofs of the Circulation of the Blood. The ancient 
physiologists believed that the movement of the blood was an 
ebb and flow, to and from each side of the heart, and out and in 
by both arteries and veins. They had no idea of a circulation, 
but thought pure blood was formed in the lungs and impure 
in the liver, and that these partially mixed in the heart 
through minute pores supposed to exist in the septum. 
Servetus, who was burnt alive by Calvin in 1553, first stated 
that there was a continuous passage through the lungs from 
the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary veins, but the great 
Englishman Harvey first, in lectures delivered in the College 
of Phvsicians of London about 1C 16, demonstrated that the 
movement of the blood was a continuous circulation as we 


252 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


now know it, and so laid the foundation of modern Physi¬ 
ology. In his time, however, the capillary vessels had not 
been discovered, so that although he was quite certain that 
the blood got somehow from the final branches of the aorta to 
the radicles of the venous system, he did not exactly know 
how. 

The proofs of the course of the circulation are at present 
quite conclusive, and may be summed up as follows: (1) 
Blood injected into an artery in the dead Body will return by 
a vein; but injected into a vein will not pass back by an 
artery. (2) The anatomical arrangement of the valves of the 
heart and of the veins shows that the blood can only flow 
from the heart, through the arteries and back to the heart by 
the veins. (3) A cut artery spurts from the end next the 
heart, a cut vein bleeds most from the end farthest from the 
heart. (4) A portion of a vein when emptied fills only from 
the end farthest from the heart. This observation can be 
made on the veins on the back of the hand of any thin per¬ 
son, especially if the vessels be first gorged by holding the 
hand in a dependent position for a few seconds. Select then 
a vein which runs for an inch or so without branching, place 
a finger on its distal end, and then empty it up to its next 
branch (where valves usually exist) by compressing it from 
below up. The vessel will then be found to remain empty as 
long as the finger is kept on its lower end, but to fill im¬ 
mediately when it is removed; which proves that the valves 
prevent any filling of the vein from its heart-end backwards. 
(5) If a bandage be placed around the arm, so as to close the 
superficial veins, but not tight enough to occlude the deeper- 
seated arteries, the veins on the distal side of the bandage 
will become gorged and those on its proximal side empty, 
showing again that the veins only receive blood from their 
ends turned towards the capillaries. (6) In the lower animals 
direct observation with the microscope shows the steady flow 


of blood from the arteries through the capillaries to the veins, 
but never in the opposite direction. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


THE NERVES OF THE HEART, AND SOME PHYSIOLOGI¬ 
CAL PECULIARITIES OF CARDIAC MUSCLE. 

The Co-ordination of Heart and Arteries. We have 

hitherto considered the working of the vascular system as if 
it were a mere mechanical hydraulic apparatus; and such in 
a certain sense it is, and by so regarding it many of the phe¬ 
nomena of the blood-flow can be explained. But life is a 
constant adjustment to constantly varying conditions, and 
the higher the organism the more numerous the conditions 
which influence it and the greater its power of adapting itself 
to them; and this adaptability, this continuous self-adjust¬ 
ment, is nowhere better exhibited than in the heart and 
blood-vessels. 

The object to be attained is the maintenance of an orderly 
current in the capillaries in accordance with the needs of the 
whole Body and of each of its organs at the time. This 
clearly calls for some means of interaction between heart and 
blood-vessels: should the heart beat and the arteries relax or 
contract, each without reference to the other, no steady capil¬ 
lary flow could result. To secure such a flow the work done 
by the heart and the resistance offered in the vessels must 
at all times be correlated; so that the heart shall not 
by too powerful action over-distend or perhaps burst the 
small arteries, nor the latter contract too much and so, by 
increasing the peripheral resistance, raise aortic pressure to a 
great height and increase unduly the work to be done by the 
left ventricle in forcing open the semilunar valves. 

Further, the total amount of blood in the Body is not suffi¬ 
cient to keep all its organs simultaneously supplied with the 
amount needful for the full exercise of their activity; in fact 
the blood-vessels of the spleen, liver, and alimentary canal, if 
all fully distended, can themselves contain almost the whole 
blood of the Body, so that by paralyzing their coats in an animal 
it can be caused to faint, or even be killed, by what has been 

253 


254 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


called an “ internal bleeding,” due to the accumulation of so 
much blood in the vessels of the abdomen that not enough is 
left over for the supply of the brain and other parts. In the 
Body, accordingly, we never find all its parts hard at work at 
the same moment. If when one group of muscles was set at 
work and needed an extra blood-supply, this should be pro¬ 
vided merely by increasing the heart’s activity and keeping 
up a faster blood-flow everywhere throughout the Body, 
there would be a clear waste—much as if the chandeliers 
in a house were so arranged that when a larger flame was 
wanted at one burner it could only be obtained by turn¬ 
ing more gas on at all the rest at the same time; besides the 
big tap at the gas-meter regulating the general supply of the 
house, local taps at each burner are required which regulate 
the gas-supply to each flame independently of the others. A 
corresponding arrangement is found in the Body. Certain 
nerves control the calibre of the arteries supplying different 
organs and, when the latter are set at work, cause their arte¬ 
ries to dilate and so increase the amount of blood flowing 
through them, while the general circulation elsewhere re¬ 
mains practically unaffected. The resting parts at any mo¬ 
ment thus get enough blood to maintain their healthy nutri¬ 
tion and the working parts get the larger quantity required to 
make good used-up material and to wash out wastes: as certain 
organs come to rest and others are set in activity, the arteries 
of the former narrow and of the latter dilate; in this way the 
distribution of the blood in the Body is undergoing constant 
changes, parts which at one time contain much blood at an¬ 
other having but little. In addition, then, to nervous organs 
regulating the work of the heart and the arteries with refer¬ 
ence to one another, we have to consider another set of vascu¬ 
lar nerves which govern the local blood-supply of different 
regions of the Body. How important this is may be illus¬ 
trated by considering what happens when the surface of the 
Body is exposed for some time to cold. The skin normally 
contains much blood, brought to it in part to be cooled; but 
under the supposed conditions the loss of heat would soon be 
so great as to be harmful did not small arteries of the skin 
contract, as is indicated by its pallor, and thus lessen the 
blood-flow through it. This contraction is not chiefly, if at 
all, due to direct action of the cold on the vessels, but to the 
stimulation of cutaneous afferent nerves which excite a nerve- 


NERVES OF THE HEART. CARDIAC MUSCLE. 255 


centre from which efferent impulses are in turn sent to the 
muscular coat of the cutaneous arteries. The blood driven 
from the skin must find a place elsewhere in the circulatory 
system, and so internal organs tend to become over-full and 
at the same time general arterial pressure is raised. This, 
again through nerves, acts upon the heart, and alters its rate 
of beat for a time. But in health some internal arteries soon 
dilate sufficiently to compensate for the constriction of the 
surface vessels, and arterial pressure and the pulse again be¬ 
come normal, though with a less proportion of the total blood 
flowing through the skin than before: this readjustment is 
brought about entirely through nerves and nerve-centres 
placing all the arteries in connection with one another and 
with the heart, so that they exert a mutual control. If the 
cold be not too prolonged its cessation is followed by a return 
of the blood-flow to its original condition, this action being 
brought about by cardiac and vascular nerve apparatuses. We 
have to mainly consider in this and the succeeding chapter 
the nerves which regulate the heart-beat and those which in¬ 
fluence the calibre of arteries; but it is necessary first to study 
the muscular tissue of the heart more thoroughly than we have 
hitherto done. 

Some Physiological Peculiarities of Cardiac Muscle. 

We have already seen that the muscular tissue of the heart, 
though striped, differs considerably in structure from the 
tissue of the skeletal muscles: it differs also somewhat in 
properties, and as the latter differences can be most readily 
studied on the heart of the frog, which will beat for a long 
time after excision, it will be best to commence with that. 
The frog’s heart consists of four contractile chambers through 
which the blood flows successively, as is indicated in the dia¬ 
gram, Fig. 99, in which no attempt has been made to indicate 
the actual appearance of the organ, which is in fact curved 
on itself somewhat in the form of a capital csj (see Z, Fig. 99), 
and this is also the shape of the mammalian heart in an early 
stage of embryonic development. The main chambers are 
incompletely separated by constrictions, at some of which 
valves are placed, and are in order—the venous sinus, A, 
receiving blood from the systemic veins; the atrium, consist¬ 
ing of two auricles, B, C, of which the right is much the 
larger and is supplied from the sinus, while the left gets blood 
from the small pulmonary veins, pv\ the ventricle, D, sup- 


256 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


plied from both auricles and having projecting into it the two 
flaps of the auriculo-ventricular valve, which are continued 

from the end of the septum, 
or partition lying between 
the auricles; the bulbus ar¬ 
teriosus, E, from which the 
systemic and pulmonary arte¬ 
ries are supplied. To describe 
£pv the very interesting mechan¬ 
ism by which the arterial and 
venous blood supplied to the 
single ventricle are kept sep¬ 
arate and sent from the arte¬ 
rial bulb through different 
channels would take us be¬ 
yond the limits of this book, 
but it is well worth study in 
some treatise on comparative 
physiology. 

The muscular tissue of the 
frog’s heart consists of cells 
which are in form somewhat 
like those of involuntary mus¬ 
cle, but they are frequently 
forked at their ends, and they 
are obscurely cross - striped 
like human cardiac muscle 
(Fig. 123). The main thick¬ 
ness of the walls of all the 
chambers of the heart consists 
of this muscle, and is known 
as the myocardium. It com¬ 
mences on the ends of the 

Pig. 99.—Diagram of the frog’s heart.__ -i 

a, venous sinus; b, c, right and left au- gioat veins near where they 
rides, together forming the atrium; p.u * : fUp U pnr f- nT1f j +l 1PT1 pp 
pulmonary veins; a, a, constriction be- J um Llie nedl dnu 1S tuence 
tween sinus and atrium; D, ventricle; onntirmpri tn flip rnr»t« nf fha 
g, q , constriction between auricles and conimuea ™ ™e TOOtS 01 tUe 

ventricles; i auricdo-ventricular valve; pr rea t arteries arising from the 
E , arterial bulb; P, pneumogastnc or & & 

vagus nerve; S, sympathetic nerve; N, bulb ; but it is thinner at the 
cardiac nerve containing fibres from both ... . 

vagus and sympathetic. Z shows the Constrictions which lie be- 
natural relative positions of the chief , , . . . 

chambers of the heart: d, vena cava; e, tween tile mam Cavities than 
venous sinus;/,/, auricles; h, ventricle; i i j n 

k, arterial bulb. elsewhere, and there is ar¬ 

ranged in rings around the openings. 





NERVES OF THE HEART. CARDIAC MUSCLE. 257 


A single nerve, A, goes to tlie heart from each side (only 
that of the right side is represented in the diagram). This 
nerve is usually spoken of as the cardiac branch of the vagus 
or pneumogastric, P , but it is partly made up of fibres from 
the sympathetic nerve, S, which join the pneumogastric close 
to the skull and run on with its cardiac branch, the two form¬ 
ing the apparently single nerve-trunk, A, which runs to the 
venous sinus, breaking up near it into several twigs. On these 
twigs and in the plexus which they form in the wall of the sinus 
are numerous nerve-cells, forming the sums ganglion or 
ganglion of Remak. From the sinus nerves run down the 
walls of the auricles to the auriculo-ventricular groove, < 7 , and 
two comparatively large twigs pass down the auricular septum 
to the region of the valve, i, and there enter a collection of nerve 
cells which, with other cells lying in the groove, constitute the 
auriculo-ventricular or Bidder’s ganglion . From that gan¬ 
glion nerves are continued to the wall of the ventricle, and 
near its base have nerve-cells mixed with them. A few 
nerve-cells are also found among the fibres running down the 
auricular septum: in the apex of the ventricle, however, and 
in the bulb there are no ganglion-cells, though nerve-fibres 
are present. We find then a considerable collection of nerve- 
cells in the walls of the venous sinus, a few cells in the au¬ 
ricular septum, a considerable collection at the junction of 
atrium with ventricle, and a few scattered cells in the neigh¬ 
boring portions of the ventricle. The cells of the ganglion 
of Remak and some of those in the septum belong to a type 
differing somewhat from those hitherto described. Each is 
pear-shaped, and has a conspicuous nucleus with a nucle¬ 
olus; from the narrow end of the cell proceeds a branch 
which ultimately becomes the axis cylinder of a medullated 
nerve-fibre. Another branch arises by two or more roots 
which coil spirally around the straight branch, and finally 
unite and proceed as a non-medullated fibre. Most of the 
remaining nerve-cells of the frog’s heart are spindle-shaped, 
and receive a nerve-fibre at one end and give one off at the 
other. They are known as bipolar cells. The cardiac nerve, 
A, Fig. 99 , contains both gray and medullated fibres, the 
latter coming entirely or almost entirely from its vagus root; 
as the fibres passing on from the sinus ganglion to the gan¬ 
glion of Bidder contain very few medullated fibres, it is prob¬ 
able that many of the vagus fibres end in the pear-shaped 


258 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


cells from which gray fibres are given off to the rest of the 
heart, mingled with the original gray fibres derived from the 
sympathetic: in the ventricle and bulb only non-medullated 
fibres are found. 

The Beat of the Frog’s Heart. When both cardiac 
nerves are cut in a frog the heart continues its regular rhyth¬ 
mic beat, as it does also when carefully removed from the 
body of the animal: this makes it clear that whatever initi¬ 
ates the beat lies in the heart itself, which must therefore be 
regarded as an automatic organ; but leaves it still uncertain 
whether the exciting cause of each beat is to be sought in the 
nervous elements of the heart or in the cardiac muscle itself. 
Arguing from the analogy of ordinary striped muscle, which 
is not automatic, one would be inclined to ascribe to the 
nerve-cells of the isolated heart the origination of nervous 
impulses for the myocardium, and certain experiments tend 
to support this view; but cardiac muscle differs considerably 
from the skeletal muscles in its histology, so it is unsafe to 
argue from one to the other, and some experiments show that 
we must ascribe to it, in addition to contractility, a certain 
amount of automaticity and of conductivity and co-ordinating 
power. In physiological properties it combines the character¬ 
istic properties of fully differentiated nerve-cell and nerve- 
fiore with those of muscle-fibre. 

Each beat of the heart of the frog can be seen to com¬ 
mence where the great veins enter the venous sinus, and from 
there to spread rapidly over the whole sinus; then there is a 
brief check, and the atrium beats; then another check, fol¬ 
lowed by the beat of the ventricle; finally, again after a very 
short pause, comes the contraction of the arterial bulb: then 
the series of phenomena is repeated in the same unvarying 
order as long as the heart is in good condition and is left to 
itself. The fact that each cycle of contractions begins at 
the mouths of the vence cavce and the sinus, where nerve-cells 
are very numerous, and passes on to the ventricle, where they 
are few, and to the bulb, where there are none, has been taken 
as an evidence of the origination of each beat through stimuli 
developed in cardiac nerve-cells; and this opinion gains sup¬ 
port from what is usually seen on an excised heart when it is 
gradually dying. The bulb and ventricle cease to beat first, 
then the auricles, last the sinus, and this although the ven¬ 
tricle may still be contractile and able to give a good beat or 


NERVES OF THE HEART. CARDIAC MUSCLE. 259 


a set of several beats when directly stimulated, as by pricking 
or by induction shocks. The loss of irritability as the 
heart dies also usually appears in the same order: when the 
ventricle and auricle have both ceased to beat, it is frequently 
possible to excite the auricle by a direct stimulation which is 
powerless when applied to the ventricle; and when the whole 
heart has ceased to pulsate the venous sinus will sometimes re¬ 
spond to direct stimulation when auricle and ventricle will not. 
Still further, if the heart be carefully divided at the level aa y 
Fig. 99, so as to separate the sinus from the 
rest, the usual result is that the sinus goes on 
beating, but the rest of the heart lies for a 
time at rest: soon it begins to beat quite 
rhythmically, but at a slower rate than the 
separated sinus. If the cross-section be made 
at the level gg so as to separate the sinus and 
auricle from the rest, they go on beating, but 
the ventricle and bulb usually lie quiescent 
for a considerable time, and then commence. 

On account of the anatomical relations of the 
parts (Z, Fig. 99) it is not possible to com¬ 
pletely separate the ventricle from the sinus o/a^Susion^anJ 
without doing injury to the former; but if separated apex t o? 
the lower third of the ventricle (which con- ^•J e £2rt e for f the 
tains no nerve-cells) be cut off from the rest through 

of the heart along the line oo, this separated * t: ! w ; b.out- 

portion never begins to beat spontaneously, »uia. 
though the remainder of the heart continues its pulsations. 
So far the case for the view that the nerve-cells take the in¬ 
itiative in the changes which result in a normal beat, and 
that cardiac muscle is not automatic, is a strong one; but 
other facts show that it cannot be accepted without modifi¬ 
cation. 

Although the separated apex of the ventricle of the frog, 
left to itself, does not beat, yet it can be made to beat without 
the application to it of anything that we are justified in call¬ 
ing a stimulus: it does under certain conditions exhibit auto- 
maticity. If it be tied on the end of a tube divided by a 
partition (Fig. 100), and some blood or blood-serum be circu¬ 
lated through it, in from a and out by b, under a slight press¬ 
ure, this bit of ventricle, devoid of nerve cells, after a time 
begins to beat rhythmically. It has been suggested that in 






260 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


this case the distension of the muscle or some chemical con¬ 
stituent of the liquid acts as a stimulus; but in no other 
muscle do we find blood-supply or mere stretching act as a 
stimulus, and if they are to be assumed as so acting in this 
case their action is uniform, while the resulting contractions 
are interrupted and rhythmic: moreover, they are co-ordi¬ 
nated; they are not irregular twitches first of one bundle of 
the myocardiac fibres and then of another, but duly combined, 
so as by their mutual action to empty the cavity they surround. 
The evidence thus obtained as to the possession of some auto¬ 
matic and some co-ordinative properties by the frog’s cardiac 
muscle is strengthened by experiments on the hearts of tor¬ 
toises and terrapins. In those animals the apical portions of 
the ventricle are devoid of nerve-cells, yet narrow strips of 
them hung up and slightly loaded will usually begin to beat 
after a time. If they do not, all that is necessary is to stimu¬ 
late them rhythmically for a short time; then on ceasing the 
stimulation the rhythmic contractions continue. Here, no 
doubt, the loading is a favoring condition, but so it is for the 
activity of ordinary muscles, on which, nevertheless, it does 
not act as a stimulus. 

The conclusion to which we are led is that the muscle- 
cells of the frog’s heart have retained to some extent those 
automatic and co-ordinating faculties of undifferentiated 
protoplasm which the more highly evolved fibre of skeletal 
muscle has lost. We find in the presence of certain of the 
nerve-cells of the heart a highly favorable condition for the 
exhibition of those powers: the nerve-elements perhaps influ¬ 
ence the nutrition, perhaps in some other mode affect the 
molecular structure of the muscle-cells connected with them 
so as to favor spontaneous contraction, but, like stretching 
the isolated strip of ventricle, they merely bring about a state 
of things promoting the exercise of powers inherent in the 
cardiac muscle tissue itself. 

The evidence as to the automaticity of the muscle of the 
mammalian heart is not quite as full as in the case of the frog. 
In it also there are collections of ganglion-cells where the 
great veins join the auricles and near the base of the ventri¬ 
cles; but there are others in the apical region of the ventricles, 
so it is not possible to examine an isolated apex free from 
ganglion-cells as it is in the frog. The musculature of the 
auricles is prolonged for some little way on the ends of the 


NERVES OF THE HEART. CARDIAC MUSCLE. 261 


vence cavce and the pulmonary veins, and there each normal 
beat commences, the contraction spreading rapidly over the 
whole auricle and thence to the ventricle without the brief in¬ 
termediate pause observable in the frog. In the mammal, also, 
the ventricles if supplied with blood from the auricles go on 
beating although all nerve and muscular continuity between 
auricle and ventricle has been destroyed, by passing rigid tubes 
through the auriculo-ventricular openings and then tying a 
ligature tight on the outside of the heart along the auriculo- 
ventricular groove, so as to crush the tissues between the 
string and the tubes. If the ligatures be so placed as not to 
impede the flow in the coronary vessels the ventricles beat 
long and powerfully, but with a rhythm independent of that 
of the auricles and usually slower. Also when the mammalian 
heart is dying slowly, as in a suffocated animal, the auricles 
usually continue to beat after the ventricle has ceased, the 
small dogVear-shaped projection of the auricles (which it 
may be noted has given its name to the whole auricle) usually 
being the last portion to come to rest, especially that on the 
right side, which was accordingly named ultima moriens by 
the old physiologists. On the whole we are perhaps justified 
in assuming that the myocardium of the mammal is automatic, 
like that of the frog, and that in it also the presence and 
influence of ganglion-cells favor the production of a beat, 
but do not initiate it. 

The muscle of the frog’s heart is, we have seen, co-ordi- 
native: the isolated ventricular apex can perform a regular 
beat. It is probable that this is not the case in the mammal. 
When a dog’s heart is injured the ventricles sometimes cease 
to give true beats though the muscle bundles constituting 
them go on contracting, but it is with no combined action 
such as would empty the ventricle. Irregular and useless 
contractions travel simultaneously over the myocardium in 
various directions, so that the whole mass seems trembling. 
Such a state (known as “fibrillar contraction”) is especially 
apt to follow wrnunds in the region of the main nerve-trunks 
running down the ventricles alongside the larger branches of 
the coronary arteries, and is probably due to the injury of some 
nervous apparatus concerned in securing the proper co-ordi¬ 
nated contractions of the normal beat. In many other 
regions wounds may be inflicted on the ventricle with con¬ 
siderable impunity. 


262 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The Heart-beat is not a Tetanic Contraction. We have 
seen that it is possible by rapidly succeeding stimuli to throw 
the skeletal muscles into a prolonged and apparently contin¬ 
uous contraction, and that there is good reason, afforded by 
the phenomena of “ secondary tetanus,” for the belief that 
all normal contractions of the voluntary muscles are compound 
or tetanic contractions. This is not the case with the heart. 
It is possible by repeated stimuli to hurry the beat of a frog’s 
heart, but not to fuse two or more beats into a single longer 
uninterrupted contraction. And as regards the normal beat 
of the heart, experiments as to secondary tetanus prove the 
same thing. If the heart of an anaesthetized dog or other 
mammal be carefully laid bare and the nerve of a nerve- 
muscle preparation be laid on it, we get for each beat a single 
twitch of the signal muscle, and not a short tetanus lasting 
as long as the ventricular contraction, such as must arise 
were this contraction tetanic. 

The Ventricular Contraction is always Maximal. It 
has been pointed out with reference to the skeletal muscles 
that within limits the extent of a contraction varies with the 
stimulus used: a feeble stimulus giving a small contraction, 
a stronger a greater. This is not the case with cardiac mus¬ 
cle. A quiescent ventricle or strip of ventricle taken from 
the heart of a frog or turtle can often be made to contract by 
stimulation; but provided the stimulus is powerful enough 
to cause a beat at all, it always causes the fullest contraction 
the piece of heart is capable of at the time. Increase of 
stimulus causes no increase of contraction. There is good 
reason to believe that in the physiological working of the 
ventricles of the mammalian heart each completely expels 
during its contraction all the blood contained in it: the 
papillary muscles pulling down the flaps of the auriculo- 
ventricular valves so that they finally form a cone on which 
the rest of the ventricular boundaries can fit closely so as to 
obliterate the cavity they enclose. This being so, the quantity 
of blood driven into the arteries by each contraction of the 
ventricles depends on the amount in the latter when their 
beat commences. This amount depends partly upon the 
quantity of blood returned from the great veins during the 
preceding diastole and partly upon the force with which 
the auricles contract, for they, although each contraction is 
nrobably maximal for their condition at the time being, do 


NERVES OF THE HEART. CARDIAC MUSCLE. 263 


not completely empty themselves at each stroke; they some¬ 
times do so more completely and sometimes less. In this 
manner the auricles can to a great extent control the work 
done by the ventricles, through influencing the amount of 
blood in the latter at the commencement of the ventricular 
systole: more complete relaxation of the auricles during 
diastole promotes inflow from the great veins, more extensive 
contraction during auricular systole more completely fills the 
ventricles. As we shall see, the force and rate of the auricular 
beat is much more under the control of nerves reaching the 
heart from other parts than is that of the ventricles. The 
auricles are a feed-pump adjusting their work, and through 
it the work of the whole heart, to the general condition of 
the Body; the ventricles are a grosser force-pump driving on 
whatever blood is supplied to them, be it much or be it little. 

The Extrinsic Nerves of the Mammalian Heart. As in 
the frog, these come from two sources, at least so far as indi¬ 
cated by gross anatomy. Their exact anatomical arrangement 
differs in various mammals, as the rabbit, dog, and man, and 
even somewhat in different individuals of these species, but in 
the main is the same. The pneuinogastric gives off from its 
main stem in the neck several cardiac branches; so do the 
lower cervical and the upper thoracic ganglia of the sympa¬ 
thetic chain. Both sets intermingle, and near the heart end 
in plexuses containing nerve-cells; from these plexuses nerves 
are distributed to that organ. In the heart itself, as already 
stated, are collections of ganglion-cells in the auricles near the 
ends of the great veins, near the base of the ventricles, and a 
few cells scattered over the ventricles even in their apical re¬ 
gions. The nerve-fibres coming through the pneumogastrics 
are medullated and consist of a set of small fibres and a group 
of large: the smaller lose their medulla in ganglion-cells in or 
near the heart; the larger retain the medullary sheath, and may 
be traced even over the ventricles, which in this respect differ 
from that of the frog; the fibres supplied from the sympathetic 
are non-medullated. Broadly speaking, the nerve-fibres fall 
into three physiological sets corresponding to the three 
anatomical varieties: the small medullated fibres are effer¬ 
ent and inhibitory—when excited they slow the heart-beat; 
the large medullated are in part at least afferent, conveying 
to the central nervous system impulses which originate in the 
heart; the sympathetic fibres are efferent and excitor, and 


264 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


when stimulated quicken or strengthen the heart beat. The 
afferent fibres will be more conveniently studied in connection 
with nerves of the blood-vessels (Chap. XVIII). 

The Cardio-inhibitory Fibres. These, though running 
in the neck in what seems to be the main pneumogastric 
trunk, do not leave the skull in that nerve, but in the spinal 
accessory (XI cranial nerve), which, it will be remembered, 
arises in part from the brain and in part from the upper por¬ 
tion of the spinal cord. That nerve gives off near the brain 
a small branch which joins the pneumogastric and runs on in 
it to near the heart. The fibres may be tracked in the pneu¬ 
mogastric by their small size, but more satisfactorily by the 
Wallerian method. It is then found—1, when the main 
pneumogastric trunk is divided in the neck all the meduHated 
fibres in it distal to the place of section degenerate; 2, if only 
the branch joining the spinal accessory to the pneumogastric 
be cut, then only some fibres in the pneumogastric stem de¬ 
generate, and these fibres are the small medullated set; 3, if 
the pneumogastric alone be divided above the point where the 
branch from the spinal accessory joins it, then the large 
medullated fibres of the cardiac branches of the vagus degen¬ 
erate, but the small do not. Hence we conclude that the 
small fibres come through the accessory. Physiological ex¬ 
periment confirms this. Immediately after cutting the main 
pneumogastric trunk stimulation of its peripheral end checks 
the beat of the heart; but if the stimulation be applied 
after several days, it has no effect on the heart. If instead 
of cutting the whole pneumogastric stem we divide only 
the branch going to it from the accessory, we find similar 
results: after two or three days (i.e., when the microscope 
reveals degeneration of the small medullated fibres in the 
main stem, all the rest being in their normal condition) stim¬ 
ulation of it is as absolutely without direct effect on the heart 
as after complete degeneration of the whole nerve-trunk. In 
the frog there is no separate spinal accessory nerve; the cardio- 
inhibitory fibres pass from the brain directly into the pneumo¬ 
gastric; but in both frog and mammal their centre lies in a 
group of nerve-cells of the medulla oblongata known as the 
cardio-inhibitory centre. 

The cardiac nerve of the frog consists (Fig. 99) of a pneu¬ 
mogastric and a sympathetic portion: if it be stimulated the 
usual result is that the heart is slowed when the stimulus is 


NERVES OF THE HEART. CARDIAC MUSCLE. 265 


feeble, and is stopped when the stimulus is more powerful; 
and in this animal it is possible by carefully applied stimula¬ 
tion to keep the heart at rest for a considerable time, during 
which it lies distended and flabby; but nearly always it ulti¬ 
mately recommences its beat even though the stimulation of 
the nerve be continued. During its inhibition the heart is 
irritable and contractile, for it beats if a direct stimulus be 
applied to it: the myocardium is therefore not incapable of 
action; but either some influence normally proceeding from 
its nerve-cells and promoting its automatic contraction is pre¬ 
vented, or the stimulation directly acts on the cardiac muscle 
and for the time lowers or removes its spontaneity. If the 
stimulus applied to the cardiac nerve be not strong enough to 
completely inhibit the heart, it is usually seen that the pulsa¬ 
tions are not only fewer, but more feeble; but this is not always 
the case : the beats may be slower and not less powerful than 
before, or they may continue with the same rhythm, but be 
less powerful; in any case the result is to diminish for the 
time the work done by the heart. 

In mammalia the phenomena are essentially the same. If 
artificial respiration be maintained in an anaesthetized rabbit 
and its heart laid bare, and then the pneumogastric trunk be 
divided on one side of the neck and its cardiac end stimu¬ 
lated, the heart comes to rest, distended and soft to the touch; 
or, with more feeble stimulation, the pulsations are slowed; 
or they may be both slower and feebler, or feebler and not 
slower; but the amount of blood driven out by the ventricles 
in a given time is usually much less. When the beat is only 
weakened it often happens that the effect shows itself much 
more markedly on the auricles than on the ventricles, though 
this of course diminishes the work done by the ventricles, as 
they are then supplied with less blood to pump on; and occa¬ 
sionally it may be seen that the auricles miss a beat, giving only 
one for each two of the ventricles, quite contrary to the case 
of a dying heart, in which, as we have seen, the auricular beat 
is more prominent. This illustrates the fact that the auricles 
are more sensitive to external nervous control than the ven¬ 
tricles, and provide, so to speak, the “ fine adjustment” of the 
cardiac apparatus. 

Whether the heart is stopped or slowed or its beats weak¬ 
ened, the result must be a fall in arterial pressure, for the 
stretched arteries go on driving blood through the capillaries 


266 


THE HUMAN BOD Y. 


to the veins, while their supply from the heart is cut off or 
lessened. Hence a pressure-gauge attached to an artery 
shows readily the influence of stimulation of the cardio-in- 
hibitory fibres; and in order to avoid the serious operation of 
opening the thorax to observe the heart directly, it is usual 
to study indirectly the cardiac effect of stimulation of the 
pnemogastric by observing its influence on arterial pressure. 






Fig. 101.—Manometer for recording variations in arterial pressure, ddqgg . glass 
U-tube partly filled with mercury, o; its limb, qq, is open to i lie air, and a float bear¬ 
ing the light stem e on w'hioh is the pen f rests on the mercury, the limb dd is 
filled above the mercury with magnesium sulphate solution and connected water¬ 
tight by tubes and the eannula a with the heart end of a divided artery. The pen 
writes on a horizontal I v travelling surface and rises and falls with the mercury on 
the side gg, a rise indicating increase of arterial pressur , a fall the rever-e: the 
pressure in the artery at any moment is indicated by the vertical distance between 
the top of the mercury in dd and that in gg. due allowance being made for the 
weight of the magnesium sulphate and some other possible sources of error. 


For this purpose a small glass tube or cannula , a , filled with 
solution of magnesium sulphate (to cheek blood-clotting) is in¬ 
troduced into the cardiac end of a divided artery, say the fem¬ 
oral, of a living animal, the artery being clamped at a place 
nearer the heart than the point where the cannula is tied on. 












NERVES OF THE HEART . CARDIAC MUSCLE. 267 


The cannula is (Fig. 101) connected by an inelastic tube, c, of 
convenient length, also filled with magnesium sulphate, to 
one end of a U-shaped glass pressure-gauge or manometer , 
ddgg , containing mercury. On the top of the mercury in the 
limb gg of the manometer floats a light stem e carrying a pen 
which writes on a travelling surface. Above the mercury, o y 
on the side dd, the tube is filled with magnesium sulphate 
solution. When the pressure on each side of the manometer 
is alike the mercury stands at the same level in both limbs, 
but when it is increased on the side dd by taking the clamp 
off the artery and throwing in the pressure of the blood the 
mercury in gg rises, carrying the float and pen with it and 
draws a line such as that at yz , Fig. 102, on the travelling 



Fig. 102.— Tracing: of arterial pressure during: vagus inhibition of the heart. To 
be road from rigrlit to left: yzpq, blood pressure-line traced by the manometer pen; 
o itnli ates <•« the tracing the instant at which the nerve was stimulated: p, the 
instant at which the stimulation ended; ae , line traced by a pen marking half 
seconds; xy. line of no pressure, that is. level at which the pen would write were 
there no arterial pressure; the distance between it and the part of the manometer 
line directly above it multiplied by two gives the actual pressure in mercury in the 
artery at. that moment. The small variations of pressure seen on the curve are 
due to beats of the heart; they are absent during the inhibition and slow for a 
short time after it. 


surface, the small curves ( pulse-waves ) on which correspond to 
the slight increases of arterial pressure following each contrac¬ 
tion of the left ventricle. The number of these small* curves in 
a given time gives us therefore the pulse-rate. The pneumo- 
gastric is meanwhile exposed in the neck and cut across: the 
object of dividing it is to prevent stimuli travelling to the 
brain by the afferent fibres in it, as they would act on the nerve- 
centres and lead to complicated results. The peripheral end 
of the cut nerve is then stimulated, the excitation commencing 
at, say, the instant corresponding to the point o on the tracing. 






268 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


It is seen that the heart does not stop at once but gives a beat 
or two and then stops as indicated by the sudden fall of arte¬ 
rial pressure and the absence of all pulse-waves from the 
tracing. If the stimulation be stopped at the instant indi¬ 
cated by p, the heart does not begin immediately to beat, but 
when it does, the beats are powerful and soon bring the arte¬ 
rial pressure back to its former level, or in many cases to a 
point above it for some time before the previous pressure and 
pulse-rate are regained. Such a tracing shows among other 
things that a certain “latent period” elapses before the 
stimulation of the inhibitory fibres influences the heart¬ 
beat, and that the influence of the stimulus once established 
continues a short time after the stimulation is stopped; and 
that the first beats after cessation of the inhibition are slow 
and powerful. Of course without any manometer one can 
detect the effect of cardio-inhibitory stimulus by a finger 
placed over the pulse of an animal or by listening to the 
heart-sounds, but the graphic method above described allows 
of much more accurate study. 

It has been stated in a previous paragraph that stimulation 
of the cardiac nerve usually stops or slows the heart-beat of a 
frog. The reason for the qualifying term is that sometimes 
the stimulation quickens the beat. This is due to the fact 
that the nerve (see Fig. 99) is a mixed one and that the 
fibres it receives from the sympathetic are directly antago¬ 
nistic in action to those derived from the vagus. In most 
cases when the whole trunk is stimulated the vagus fibres get 
the upper hand, but to be sure of pure cardio-inhibitory results 
the vagus must be stimulated before the sympathetic branch 
joins it. Then the action is always inhibitory; and certain 
other important phenomena may be observed, showing that 
the vagus contains fibres which tend to throw the heart into a 
better working state. When an exposed frog’s heart is dying 
and has ceased to beat, or when the ventricle has come to rest 
though the sinus and auricles still work, it not unfrequently 
happens that a period of vagus stimulation is followed by a 
set of beats: or similarly that when the whole heart is beating 
feebly stimulation of the vagus is after a time followed 
by more forcible contractions. Hence it has been suggested 
that the nerve contains fibres which tend to promote the 
nutrition of the cardiac muscle, fibres which are anabolic 
and favor constructive chemical processes. Whether these fibres 


NERVES OF THE HEART. CARDIAC MUSCLE. 269 

are the same as the cardio-inhibitory or are a distinct set is 
still uncertain. In mammals, also, it is frequently noticeable 
that vagus inhibition of the heart is followed by a period of 
unusually powerful pulsation. 

The Cardio-inhibitory Centre. This consists of nerve- 
cells lying in the medulla oblongata and giving origin to the 
cardio-inhibitory fibres. In some animals it seems to be nor¬ 
mally always in a state of slight activity, sending out feeble 
impulses which exert a slight check on the rate of pulse. 
This is the case in the dog, for in that animal division of 
both pneumogastric nerves in the neck is followed by a 
quicker heart-beat: in the rabbit, on the other hand, the 
centre appears usually at rest, as section of the pneumogas- 
trics in that animal has no effect on the pulse-rate. Whether 
normally in action or not the centre can readily be excited, 
especially by afferent impulses reaching it through abdominal 
nerves. If the intestines of a frog (the brain of which in 
front of the medulla oblongata has been entirely removed so 
as to make consciousness impossible) be exposed and sharply 
struck, the heart stops in diastole; but if both cardiac nerves 
have been previously divided this result does not follow. 
The stoppage is clearly then a reflex inhibition through the 
oardio-inhibitory centre and nerves, and the afferent tract can 
be readily traced. The afferent impulses from the intestine 
pass through the mesenteric branches of the sympathetic, for 
if these be cut no cardiac standstill follows the mechanical 
stimulation of the intestine, although the vagi be intact. If 
only the communicating branches from the sympathetic gan¬ 
glia to the spinal cord be cut or only the anterior roots of the 
corresponding spinal nerves, or only the spinal cord above the 
place of entry of these roots, or only the medulla oblongata 
destroyed, yet, in each case, the intestinal stimulation causes 
no stoppage of the heart. When the standstill does result it 
is therefore reflex, the afferent path being—sensory nerve-end¬ 
ings in intestine, mesenteric nerves, sympathetic ganglion, 
communicating branches, anterior spinal roots, spinal cord 
to .centre in medulla; the efferent fibres are the inhibitory 
in the vagus. The fainting which in man not infrequently 
follows a severe blow on the pit of the stomach is due to 
similar reflex excitation of the cardio-inhibitory centre: and 
the fainting seen during severe pain and that which certain 
odors cause in some persons are due to similar stimulation of 


270 


THE HUMAN BODY . 


the cardio-inhibitory centre through sensory nerves, and serve 
to illustrate the many afferent fibres from different regions of 
the Body which can influence the heart-beat. 

The cardio-inhibitory centre may also be stimulated 
directly (as by piercing it with a needle) and stop the heart. 
But a more interesting instance is its excitation by high 
arterial pressure. Nearly always a very high pressure in the 
aorta is accompanied by a slow pulse due to cardio-inhibitory 
nerve-impulses, for if the vagi be cut under such circum¬ 
stances the heart-rate immediately increases. The slower 
beat, of course, by lessening the work of the heart tends to 
bring back the high arterial pressure to a more normal level, 
providing an adjustment of the heart’s work to the condition 
of the arterial system at the time. The brain, enclosed in 
the rigid skull-cavity, is especially likely to be affected by 
increased arterial tension, for distension of the intra-cranial 
arteries must bring about greater pressure on all the other 
contents of the skull; and the cardio-inhibitory centre is very 
sensitive to increased pressure. If a small hole be bored 
through the skull of a dog and a little innocuous fluid in¬ 
jected so as to cause pressure on the brain, the beat of the 
heart is promptly slowed and weakened, but if the pneumo- 
gastrics have been previously cut the heart-beat is not 
influenced. In man similar stimulation of the cardio-inhibi¬ 
tory centre is shown in apoplexy, which is due to the bursting 
of some vessel inside the skull and the effusion of blood, winch 
by pressure on the brain causes the unconsciousness and pa¬ 
ralysis which characterize the stroke. During such a fie the 
pulse is almost invariably very slow from the action of the 
increased pressure on the cardio-inhibitory cells. This is 
clearly a preservative action, for the resulting lower arterial 
pressure makes the haemorrhage less, and more likely to come 
to an end. Among conditions of the blood which stimulate 
the cardio-inhibitory apparatus may be mentioned deficient 
oxygenation, which will be referred to again when the phe¬ 
nomena of suffocation are described. 

The Cardio-accelerator or Augmentor Nerves. The 
influence of these on the heart is to quicken or strengthen 
its beat or both: but only for a time, their final action being 
to hasten exhaustion; they are essentially katabolic in their 
influence on the nutrition of the organ. 

Both in frog and mammal they pass to the heart from 


NERVES OF THE HEART. CARDIAC MUSCLE. 271 


the sympathetic, taking somewhat different paths in different 
animals. In the frog their course is shown in Fig. 99; in 
mammals most of them come from the upper thoracic gan¬ 
glion of the sympathetic and the neighboring parts of the 
main sympathetic chain. If the heart of a frog be exposed 
and watched while the branch s, Fig. 99, is stimulated its 
beat is seen to be quickened, especially if the previous rate 
were slow: and quite similar phenomena may be observed 
when the corresponding nerves are stimulated in a rabbit or 
dog. And the beat is not merely made more rapid: it is dis¬ 
tinctly more powerful for the time, the heart driving out more 
blood at each stroke (even though pressure in the aorta may 
be high) and thus doing increased work. 

Though the augmentor fibres reach the heart through the 
sympathetic they have their centre (cardio-accelerator centre) 
in the medulla oblongata, from which in mammalia they pass 
down the spinal cord to the anterior roots of the upper tho¬ 
racic spinal nerves, to the communicating branches, to the 
sympathetic ganglia, and thence to the cardiac plexus and 
the heart. Their centre, like the inhibitory, may be reflexly 
excited : powerful stimulation of a sensory nerve, after section- 
of the vagi, usually quickens the pulse if the accelerator fibres 
passing from the thoracic ganglia be intact, but has no effect 
if these be previously divided. If the vagi are not cut the 
result is not so certain, as the afferent impulses may also 
excite the cardio-inhibitory centre and cause a mixed action: 
but speaking generally afferent impulses which in a conscious 
animal would cause acute but not extreme pain cause increase 
of the heart* beat. This by raising general arterial tension 
would for the time put the animal in good condition to make 
a vigorous effort, and so is obviously an unconscious adaptation 
of the organism for the preservation of its safety. While ex¬ 
treme pain or extensive injury involving many afferent nerves 
tends to cause fainting and loss of consciousness, the cardio- 
inhibitory centre getting the upper hand. 

The Influence of Temperature Changes and of Calcium 
Salts on the Heart-beat. If the excised heart of a frog be 
cooled it beats more slowly; if heated, more quickly; until 
the temperature approaches the limit at which muscle passes 
into rigor. The observation is more difficult with mammals, 
but if the heart of a dog be completely separated from all 
the rest of the body except the lungs and supplied with blood 


272 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


it is possible to keep it alive for some hours, beating regularly 
and powerfully, and on such a heart it is easy to observe that 
cooler blood causes slower beat and vice versa. While the 
quick pulse observed in fevers may therefore be in part due 
to paralysis of the cardio-inliibitory centre or stimulation 
of the cardio-accelerator, it is in part at least due solely to 
the hotter blood circulating through the coronary vessels. 
Whether the higher temperatnre in this case acts primarily 
on the nerve-cells of the heart or on the muscle is not known. 

If circulation be kept up through a frog’s heart by the 
perfusion method (Fig. 100), the organ may be kept beating for 
a very long time if the liquid supplied be blood or serum. If 
only dilute solution (0.75$) of sodium chloride be given, the 
beat continues for some time, but not so long as if no liquid 
be circulated; the salt apparently washes out something 
which the heart needs. The beat of such a “ washed-out ” 
heart may be restored by substituting milk or serum or de- 
fibrinated blood for the saline solution, or even by adding to 
the sodium chloride a very little of a soluble calcium salt. 
Serum, blood, and milk all contain calcium salts, and albu¬ 
minous solutions free from calcium (as paraglobulin) do not 
restore the beat; nor do serum or milk or blood deprived of 
calcium. Hence the presence of some salt of that metal 
seems to have a close relation to the functional activity of 
the heart, as indeed it has to muscular activity in general. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE VASO-MOTOR NERVES AND NERVE-CENTRES. 

The Nerves of the Blood-vessels. The arteries, as 
already pointed out, possess a muscular coat composed of 
fibres arranged around them, so that their contraction can 
narrow the vessels. This coat is most prominent in the 
smaller vessels,—those of the size which go to supply separate 
organs,—but disappears again in the smallest branches, which 
are about to divide into capillaries for the individual tissue 
elements of an organ. These vascular muscles are under the 
control of certain special nerves called vaso-motor , and these 
latter can thus govern the amount of blood reaching any 
organ at a given time. Most of the vascular nerve-fibres 
have their origin in the cerebro-spinal centre, though they 
pass through sympathetic ganglia on their way to the vessels. 
In a few regions ganglion-cells are found lying close to the 
arteries, and some of the vaso-motor fibres are probably con¬ 
nected with them, but as a rule they end directly in the mus¬ 
cular coat. 

In the heart we had to consider a rhythmically contract¬ 
ing organ the force of whose contractions could be increased 
or diminished by the influence of extrinsic nerves; in the 
arteries, speaking broadly, we have to deal with muscle in a 
condition of tonic or constant contraction, which contraction 
can be increased by impulses coming through excitor or vaso¬ 
constrictor nerves, and diminished through the activity of 
inhibitory or vaso-dilator nerves. The general tonic con¬ 
traction of the arterial muscle is, however, much more de¬ 
pendent on the vaso-constrictor nerve-fibres than is the beat 
of the heart on the cardio-excitor nerves. The inhibitory 
set of vaso-motor nerves have a much less extensive distribu¬ 
tion over the arterial system than the constrictor. 

The Vaso-constrictor Nerves. If the ear of a white rab¬ 
bit be held up against the light while the animal is kepi quiet 
and not alarmed, the red central artery can be seen coursing 

273 


274 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


along the translucent organ, giving off branches which .by 
subdivision become too small to be separately visible, and the 
whole ear has a pink color and is warm from the abundant 
blood flowing through it. Attentive observation will show 
also that the calibre of the main artery is not constant; at 
somewhat irregular periods of a minute or more it dilates and 
contracts a little. 

If the sympathetic trunk have been previously divided on 
the other side of the neck of the animal, the ear on that side 
will present a very different appearance. It arteries will be 
much dilated and the whole ear fuller of blood, redder, and 
distinctly warmer; the slow alternating variations in arterial 
diameter also have disappeared. We get thus evidence that 
the normal mean calibre of the artery is maintained by influ¬ 
ences reaching its muscular coat through the cervical sym¬ 
pathetic. Stimulation of the upper end of the cut nerve 
confirms this opinion. It is then seen that the arteries of 
the corresponding ear gradually contract until even the main 
vessel can hardly be seen, and in consequence the whole ear 
becomes pale and cold. After the stimulation is stopped the 
arteries again slowly dilate until they have regained their full 
paralytic size, and they usually remain permanently in that 
condition. Sometimes they regain after some days almost 
the size of those in the ear on the uninjured side, even when 
the nerve has not only been cut, but the upper cervical 
sympathetic ganglion extirpated; this seems to indicate that 
the arterial muscle has a small automaticity of its own tending 
to keep it in a moderate state of contraction, but it is less 
marked than the automaticity of the myocardium. 

Quite similar phenomena can be observed in transparent 
parts of other living animals, as in the web of a frog’s foot, 
the arteries of which dilate after section of the sciatic nerve 
and constrict when the peripheral end of the nerve is stimu¬ 
lated. In the case of other parts changes in temperature 
may be used to detect alterations in the flow of blood. In a 
dog or cat, for example, a sensitive thermometer placed be¬ 
tween the toes indicates a rise of temperature, owing to in¬ 
creased flow of warm blood through the skin, after section of 
the chief nerve of the limb, and a fall of temperature (usu¬ 
ally) during stimulation of the peripheral end of the divided 
nerve. 

When the vaso-constrictor ner-es cut are those controlling a 


VASOMOTOR NERVES AND NERVE-CENTRES. 275 


large number of arteries, the dilatation of the hitter so much 
diminishes peripheral resistance to the blood-flow as to lead 
to a marked fall of general arterial pressure; and, due care 
being taken to avoid or to allow for concomitant variations in 
the rate or force of the heart’s beat, this gives us another use¬ 
ful method of studying the distribution of the nerves con¬ 
cerned. For example, the splanchnic nerves are branches 
which spring from the thoracic portion of the sympathetic 
chain and pass through the diaphragm to end in the gan- 
gliated solar plexus from which nerves pass to the arteries of 
most of the abdominal viscera. When the splanchnic nerves 
are cut on both sides arterial pressure falls enormously, from 
say 120 millimetres of mercury in the carotid of a dog to 15 
or 20 millimetres, most of the blood of the body lying almost 
stagnant in the dilated blood-vessels of the abdomen. On the 
other hand, stimulation of the splanchnic nerves so diminishes 
the paths open for the circulation of the blood as to enor¬ 
mously increase general blood-pressure; especially if the 
cardio-inhibitory nerves be first divided so that raised blood- 
pressure inside the skull-chamber may not slow the heart¬ 
beat. 

The skin and the abdominal organs seem to be the pre¬ 
dominant localities of distribution of the vaso-constrictor 
nerves: other parts have them, but not in quantity sufficient 
to bring about any great general change in the blood-flow. 
In the abdomen is warmer, in the skin cooler blood: and 
according to the amount of heat produced in the Body and 
the temperature of the surrounding medium, the vessels of 
abdomen and skin contract or relax so as to control the pro¬ 
portion of blood sent to the skin to lose heat. 

The Vaso-constrictor Centre. The constrictor nerves of 
the arteries do not originate in the sympathetic system. If 
all the branches of the latter be left intact, the phenomena of 
paralytic dilatation of the blood-vessels can be fully brought 
about by dividing the communicating branches between certain 
spinal nerves and the corresponding sympathetic ganglia, 
or by dividing the anterior roots of certain spinal nerves. 
In this way it can be shown that the fibres all proceed 
from the thoracic and lumbar regions of the spinal cord, 
bui have not their origin in the cord. If it be cut anywhere 
in the cervical region, all arteries having a constrictor nerve 
supply are paralyzed, while stimulation of the posterior end 


276 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


of the divided cord causes widespread arterial constriction. 
The main centre for the vaso-constrictors must then lie as 
far forward as the medulla: and as all the brain in front of 
the medulla oblongata can be removed without any con¬ 
sequent arterial paralysis, the centre must lie in the medulla 
itself. This centre is often named the vaso-motor centre, but 
it is better to distinguish it as the vaso-constrictor from the 
centre for the dilator efferent nerves. 

The Control of the Vaso-constrictor Centre. The vaso¬ 
constrictor centre is automatic; it maintains a certain amount 
of activity of its own, independently of any stimuli reaching 
it through afferent nerve-fibres. Nevertheless, like nearly all 
automatic nerve-centres, it is under reflex control, so that its 
activity may be increased or lessened by afferent impulses 
conveyed to it. Nearly every sensory nerve of the Body is in 
connection with it; any stimulus giving rise to pain, for 
example, excites it, and thus constricting the arteries, in¬ 
creases the peripheral resistance to the blood-flow and raises 
arterial pressure. On the other hand, certain fibres conveying 
impulses from the heart inhibit the centre and dilate the 
arteries, lower blood-pressure, and diminish the resistance to 
be overcome by the heart. These afferent fibres, which have 
been already referred to as the large medullated fibres (p. 263) 
of the pneumogastric, are known as the depressor fibres , or in 
certain animals, for example the rabbit, where they are all 
collected into one branch, as the depressor nerve. If this 
nerve be divided and its cardiac end stimulated no effect is 
produced, but if its central end (that still connected with the 
rest of the pneumogastric trunk and through it with the 
medulla oblongata) be stimulated, arterial pressure gradually 
falls; this result being dependent upon a dilatation of the 
small arteries, and consequent diminution of the peripheral 
resistance, following an inhibition of the vaso-constrictor 
centre brought about by the depressor nerve. Through the de¬ 
pressor nerve the heart can therefore influence the calibre of 
the small arteries and, by lowering aortic pressure, diminish its 
own work if need be. In Fig. 103 is reproduced a tracing of 
the great but slow fall of blood-pressure which results from 
stimulation of the depressor fibres. It shows the slow fall of 
pressure and slightly changed pulse-rate accompanying the 
slow dilatation of the arteries, and may be compared with the 
rapid fall and slow pulse brought about (Fig. 102) by excita- 


VASO MOTOR NERVES AND NERVE-CENTRES. 277 


tion of the cardio-inhibitory nerves. The latent period is 
also noticeably long and the effect of the stimulus outlasts 
considerably the time of its application. 

Blushing. The depressor nerves control a great part of the 
vaso-constrictor centre (especially that portion of it connected 
with the splanchnic nerves) and so can bring about dilatation 
of a large number of arteries—their influence is accordingly 
called into play when general arterial pressure is to be lowered, 
but is useless for controlling local blood-supply. This is 
managed in part by other afferent nerves, each of which 
inhibits a small part only of the vaso-constrictor centre, gov¬ 
erning the arteries of a limited tract of the Body; the dilata- 



Fig. 103.—Tracing of pressure from femoral artery of a rabbit showing the influ¬ 
ence of stimulation of the central end of the depressor nerve; to be read from right 
to left: ab c d t, tracing of arterial pressure, the small variations indicating heart¬ 
beats; op, tracing of seconds pen; s, moment of commencement of stimulation; t, 
cessation of stimulation; xg, line of no pressure. 


tion of these increases the amount of blood flowing through the 
particular region to which they are distributed, but does not 
affect the total resistance to the blood-flow sufficiently to 
influence noticeably the general pressure in the arterial system. 
In blushing, for example under the influence of an emotion, 
that part of the vase-motor centre which supplies constrictor 
nerves to the arteries of the skin of the neck and face, is 
inhibited by nerve-fibres proceeding from the cerebrum to the 
medulla oblongata, and the face and neck consequently be¬ 
come full of blood and flush up. Quite similar phenomena 
occur under other conditions in many parts of the Body, 
although when not visible on the surface we do not usually 
call them blushes. The mucous membrane lining the empty 
stomach is pallid and its arteries contracted, but as soon as 
food enters the organ it becomes red and full of blood; the 
food stimulating afferent nerve-fibres there, which inhibit 





278 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


that part of the vaso-motor centre which governs the gastric 
arteries. 

Taking Cold. This common disease is not urifrequently 
caused through undue reflex excitement of the vaso-motor 
centre. Cold acting upon the skin stimulates, through the 
afferent nerves, the portion of the vaso-motor centre governing 
the skin arteries, and the latter become contracted, as shown 
by the pallor of the surface. This has a twofold influence— 
in the first place, more blood is thrown into internal parts, 
and in the second, contraction of the arteries over so much of 
the Body considerably raises the general blood-pressure. 
Consequently the vessels of internal parts become overgorged 
or “ congested,” a condition which readily passes into inflam¬ 
mation. The action is of course primarily protective, to 
prevent too great loss of heat from the Body; but if internal 
organs be weak or diseased or if the exposure to w r et or cold 
be prolonged, it is apt to be followed by catarrh or inflam¬ 
mation of more or less of the respiratory tract causing bron¬ 
chitis, or of the intestines causing diarrhoea. In fact the com¬ 
mon summer diarrhoea is far more often due to a chill of the 
surface, causing intestinal catarrh, than to the fruits eaten 
in that season which are so often blamed for it. The besF 
preventative is to wear, when exposed to great changes of tem¬ 
perature, a woollen or at least a cotton garment over the trunk 
of the Body; linen is so good a conductor of heat that it 
permits any change in the external temperature to act almost 
at once upon the surface of the Body. After an unavoidable 
exposure to cold or wet the thing to be done is of course to 
restore the cutaneous circulation; for this purpose movement 
should be persisted in, and a thick dry outer covering put on, 
until warm and dry underclothing can be obtained. 

For healthy persons a temporary exposure to cold, as a 
plunge in a bath, is good, since in them the sudden contrac¬ 
tion of the cutaneous arteries soon passes off and is succeeded 
by a dilatation causing a warm healthy glow on the surface. 
If the bather remain too long in cold water, however, this 
reaction passes off and is succeeded by a more persistent 
chilliness of the surface, which may even last all day. The 
bath should therefore be left before this occurs, but no abso¬ 
lute time can be stated, as the reaction is more marked and 
lasts longer in strong persons, and in those used to cold bath¬ 
ing, than in others. 


VASOMOTOR NERVES AND NERVE-CENTRES . 279 


Vaso-dilator Nerves. We have already noticed, in the 
case of the stomach, one method by which a locally increased 
blood-supply may be brought about in an organ while it is 
at work, viz., by inhibition of local vaso constrictor fibres. 
Frequently, however, in the Body this is managed in 
another way; by efferent vaso-dilator nerves which inhibit 
or paralyze, not the vaso-constrictor centre, but the muscles 
of the blood-vessels directly. The nerves of the skeletal 
muscles for example contain two sets of efferent fibres: one 
motor proper and the other vaso-dilator. When the muscle 
contracts in a reflex action or under the influence of the 
will both sets of fibres are excited; so that when the organ is 
set at work its arteries are simultaneously dilated and more 
blood flows through it. But if the animal have previously 
administered to it such a dose of curare as to just paralyze 
the true motor-fibres, stimulation of the nerve produces 
dilatation of the arteries without a corresponding muscular 
contraction. Quite a similar thing occurs in the salivary 
glands. Their cells, which form the saliva, are aroused to 
activity by special nerve-fibres; but the gland-nerve also 
contains a quite distinct set of vaso-dilator fibres which nor¬ 
mally cause a simultaneous dilatation of the gland-artery, 
though either can be artificially stimulated by itself and 
produce its effect alone. Through such arrangements the 
distribution of the blood in the Body at any moment is gov¬ 
erned : so that working parts shall have abundance and other 
parts less, while at the same time the general arterial pressure 
remains the same on the average; since the expansion of a 
feiv small local branches but little influences the total periph¬ 
eral resistance in the vascular system. Moreover, commonly 
when one set of organs is at work with its vessels dilated, 
others are at rest with their arteries comparatively contracted, 
and so a general average blood-pressure is maintained. Few" 
persons, for example, feel inclined to do brain-work after a 
heavy meal: for then a great part of the blood of the whole 
Body is led off into the dilated vessels of the digestive organs, 
and the brain gets a smaller supply. On the other hand, when 
the brain is at work its vessels are dilated and often the whole 
head flushed: and so excitement or hard thought after a meal 
is very apt to produce an attack of indigestion, by diverting 
the blood from the abdominal organs, where it ought to be at 
that time. Young persons, whose organs have a superabun- 


280 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


dance of energy enabling them to work under unfavorable 
conditions, are less apt to suffer in such ways than their eld¬ 
ers. One sees boys running actively about after eating, when 
older people feel a desire to sit quiet and ruminate—or even 
to go to sleep. 

When the nerve of a limb is cut and its peripheral end is 
stimulated the usual result is arterial constriction, because 
the constrictor fibres are more numerous and more powerful 
than the dilator; a day or two after section, when the nerve 
has begun to degenerate, stimulation, however, causes dilata¬ 
tion, apparently because the constrictor fibres degenerate 
more quickly: and when the stimuli (as induction shocks) 
given to the nerve are repeated at only a slow rate the dilator 
effect frequently overcomes the constrictor. 

The Vaso-dilator Centre. The vaso-dilator nerves, like 
the vaso-constrictor, seem to originate primarily in a centre 
in the medulla oblongata. In regard to the arteries in general, 
they play a much less conspicuous part than their analogues, 
the cardio-inhibitory fibres, do in regard to the heart. 

The Vaso-motor Nerves of the Veins. Most veins have 
a muscular coat, though it is much less developed than in 
the arteries, and this coat is probably under the control of 
nerve-fibres. Satisfactory evidence of their existence is still 
wanting. 

The Vascular Phenomena of Inflammation. When 

some transparent portion of an animal (for example the 
mesentery of a mouse or guinea-pig) is carefully exposed and 
studied with a microscope, the normal flow in the small ves¬ 
sels may be studied for some time, much as in the web of the 
frog. If an irritant be applied, the immediate result is a 
widening of the small arteries and a greater and more rapid 
flow through them and the capillaries and veins. This seems 
dependent mainly on a direct paralysis of the arteries, and if 
the irritant be transient in its influence the congested con¬ 
dition soon passes off. If the irritant be more powerful, the 
vascular dilatation continues and other circulatory changes 
are seen. The corpuscles, instead of keeping, as is usual in 
arteries of microscope size, to the central part of the tube 
{axial current ), spread more evenly, and the white cor¬ 
puscles especially tend to pass into the layer of liquid in im¬ 
mediate contact with the inner coat of the artery, and at the 
same time to exhibit much more marked amoeboid move- 


VASO-MOTOR NERVES AND NERVE-CENTRES. 281 


merits than they commonly do while travelling in the blood- 
current. The platelets, also, which are normally confined to 
the axial currents, now pass towards the sides. If this stage 
of very early inflammation pass on to the next, it is observed 
that white corpuscles and platelets both stick to the inside of 
the vessels. The platelets next adhere together and break 
down into granular masses, and the white corpuscles thrust 
amoeboid processes between the lining-cells of the capillaries 
and smallest veins, and begin to push their way through. By 
these means a considerable impediment to the blood-flow is 
caused, and the circulation becomes slower, though all the 
vessels of the part may be dilated. If the inflammation con¬ 
tinue, many white corpuscles pass quite out of the vessels 
{migration) and enter the neighboring lymph-spaces: the 
red corpuscles get blocked and squeezed together into a mass 
in which their individual boundaries are indistinguishable, 
and some of them may even be squeezed through the walls 
of the capillaries (< diapedesis ). Next all blood-flow in the 
area under observation may be stopped, while^ more lymph 
than normal collects in it. From this state recovery may 
take place; or continued inflammation may lead to destruc¬ 
tion of the part. The primary local disturbances in the cir¬ 
culation seem due to changes in the inner coats of the vessels 
of the irritated region; but an extensive continued inflam¬ 
mation produces fever and many other secondary general 
results, partly through the absorption of disease products 
from the inflamed part and partly through irritation of 
afferent nerve-fibres which throw various nerve-centres into 
abnormal action. 


f 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 

Definitions. In its broad etymological meaning a secre¬ 
tion is any substance separated or derived from the blood, so 
that in a certain sense all the solid tissues of the Body, built 
up from materials supplied by the blood, are secretions. In 
practice the name has a more limited application and is given 
to two classes of substances, distinguished as true or external 
secretions and internal secretions. 

Internal secretions are the results of the vital activities of 
various organs, their by-products, passed out directly into 
the lymph and blood; and in many cases are simple wastes, 
sent to the blood-stream for conveyance to other organs which 
get rid of them: - such, for example, is the carbon dioxide 
formed in every part of the Body. In other cases the by¬ 
products of certain organs, after absorption into the blood, 
have to be further changed in a second organ before elimina¬ 
tion, and are probably of use to this second—a part of its 
pabulum: as an instance we may take leucin (amido-caproic 
acid), which is formed in many organs and, given by them to 
the blood, is carried to the liver, the cells of which convert it 
(or at least a great part of it) into urea, to be subsequently 
eliminated by the kidneys. A third very important class of 
internal secretions consists of substances formed only in one 
organ or one pair of organs and yielded by them to the blood 
which flows through them, the presence of which substances 
in the blood is essential to the healthy nutrition and the con¬ 
tinuance of the life of the Body: in such cases removal or 
extensive disease of the producing organ results in death. 
Examples are to be found in substances which the thyroid 
body and suprarenal capsules produce; they will be consid¬ 
ered more fully in Chapter XXIII. 

Excluding such things as cast hairs and epidermic scales, 
the true or external secretions may be defined as gases or 
liquids, often of very complex composition, passed out on 

282 


THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 283 


some free surface of the Body, either that of the general 
exterior or of some internal cavity, or into recesses commu¬ 
nicating with such a surface. The true secretions fall into two 
classes: one in which the product is of no further use in the 
Body and is merely separated for removal, as the urine; and 
one in which the product is intended to be used, for instance 
as a solvent in the digestion of food. The former group are 
sometimes distinguished as excretions and the latter as secre¬ 
tions proper , but there is no real difference between them, the 
organs and processes concerned being fundamentally alike in 
each case. A better division is into transudata and secretions, 
a transudation being a product which contains nothing which 
did not previously exist in the blood, and only in such quan¬ 
tity as might be derivable from it by merely physical processes; 
while a secretion in addition to transudation elements contains 
a specific element, due to the special physiological activity of 
the secretory organ; being either something which does not 
exist in the blood at all or something which, existing in the 
blood in small quantity, exists in the secretion in such a high 
proportion that it must have been actively picked up and 
conveyed there by the secretory tissues concerned. For in¬ 
stance, the gastric juice contains free hydrochloric acid which 
does not exist in the blood; and the urine contains so much 
urea that we must suppose the kidney-cells to have a peculiar 
power of removing that body from the liquids flowing near 
them. This subdivision is also justifiable on histological 
grounds; wherever there is a secreting surface or recess it is 
lined by cells, but these cells where transudata are formed (as 
on the serous membranes) are mere flat scales, with little or 
no protoplasm remaining in them (Fig. 11b), while the cells 
which line a true secreting organ are cuboidal, spherical, or 
columnar, and still retain, with their high physiological activ¬ 
ity, a good deal of their primitive protoplasm. 

Organs of Secretion. The simplest form in which a 
secreting organ occurs (A, Fig. 104) is that of a flat membrane 
provided with a layer of cells, a, on one side (that on which 
the secretion is poured out) and with a network of capillary 
blood-vessels, c, on the other. The dividing membrane, b, is 
known as the basement membrane and is usually made up of 
flat, closely fitting connective-tissue corpuscles; supporting it 
on its deep side is a layer of connective tissue, d, in which the 
blood-vessels and lymphatics are supported. Such simple forms 


284 


THE HUMAN BOD Y. 


of secreting surfaces are found on the serous membranes, but 
are not common; in most cases an extended area is required 
to form the necessary amount of secretion, and if this were 
attained simply by spreading out plane surfaces, these from 
their number and extent would be hard to pack conveniently 
in the Body. Accordingly in most cases, the greater area is 
attained by folding the secreting surface in various ways so 
that a large area can be packed in a small bulk, just as a 
Chinese lantern when shut up occupies much less space than 
when extended, although its actual surface remains of the 
same extent. In a few cases the folding takes the form of 
protrusions into the cavity of the secreting organ as indicated 
at C, Fig. 104, and found on some synovial membranes; but 
much more commonly the surface extension is attained in 
another way, the basement membrane, covered by its epithe¬ 
lium, being pitted in or involuted as at B. Such a secreting 
organ is known as a gland. 

Forms of Glands. In some cases the surface involutions 
are uniform in diameter, or nearly so, throughout ( B , Fig. 
104). Such glands are known as tubular; examples are found 
in the lining coat of the stomach (Fig. 113); also in the skin 
(Fig. 135), where they form the sweat-glandss' In other cases 
the involution swells out at its deeper end and becomes more or 
less sacculated (E ); such glands are racemose or acinous. The 
small glands which form the oily matter poured out on the 
hairs are of this type. In both kinds the lining cells near the 
deeper end are commonly different in character from the rest; 
and around that part of the gland the blood-vessels form a 
closer network. These deeper cells form the true secreting 
elements of the gland, and the passage, lined with different 
cells, leading from them to the surface, and serving merely to 
carry off the secretion, is known as the gland-duct. When 
the duct is undivided the gland is simple; but when, as is 
more usual, it is branched and each branch has a true secret¬ 
ing part at its end, we get a compound gland, tubular ( G) or 
racemose ( F\ H) as the case may be. In such cases the main 
duct, into which the rest open, is often of considerable length, 
so that the secretion is poured out at some distance from the 
main mass of the gland. 

A fully formed gland, H , thus comes to be a complex 
structure, consisting primarily of a duct, c, ductules, dd, and 
secreting recesses, ee. The ducts and ductules are lined with 


THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 285 


epithelium which is merely protective and differs in charac¬ 
ter from the secreting epithelium which lines the deepest 


A B 



Fig. 104.—Forms of glands. A, a simple secreting surface ; a. its epithelium ; 
6, basement membrane ; c, capillaries ; B, a simple tubular gland ; C , a secreting 
surface increased bv protrusions ; E . a simple racemose gland ; D and G, com¬ 
pound tubular glands ; F, a compound racemose gland. In all but A, B, and C 
the capillaries are omitted for the sake of clearness. H. half of a highly developed 
racemose gland ; c, its main duct. 


parts. Surrounding each subdivision and binding it to its 
neighbors is the gland stroma formed of connective tissue, a 





































286 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


layer of which also commonly envelops the whole gland, as 
its capsule. Usually on looking at the surface of a large 
gland it is seen to be separated by partitions of its stroma,, 
coarser than the rest, into lobes , each of which answers to a 
main division of the primary duct; and the lobes are often 
similarly divided into smaller parts or lobules. In the con¬ 
nective tissue between the lobes and lobules blood-vessels 
penetrate, to end in fine capillary vessels around the terminal 
recesses. They never penetrate the basement membrane. 
Lymphatics and nerves take a similar course; there is reason 
to believe that the nerve-fibres penetrate the basement mem¬ 
brane and become directly united with the secreting cells of 
some glands. 

The Physical Processes in Secretion. From the struc¬ 
ture of a gland it is clear that all matters derived from the 
blood and poured into its cavity must pass not only through 
the walls of the capillary blood-vessels, but also, by filtra¬ 
tion or dialysis, through the basement membrane and the 
lining epithelium. By filtration is meant the passage of a 
fluid under pressure through the coarser mechanical pores 
of a membrane, as in the ordinary filtering processes of a 
chemical laboratory ; and the higher the pressure on the 
liquid to be filtered the greater the amount which, other 
things being equal, will pass through in a given time. Since 
in the living Body the liquid pressure in the blood-capillaries 
is nearly always higher than that outside them, filtration is 
apt to take place everywhere to a greater or less extent, and 
will be increased in amount in any region by circum¬ 
stances raising blood-pressure there, and diminished by those 
lowering it. To a certain extent also the nature of the 
liquid filtered has an influence. True solutions, as those of 
salt in water, passed through unchanged ; but solutions con¬ 
taining substances such as boiled starch or raw egg-albumen, 
which swell up greatly in water rather than truly dissolve, 
are altered by filtration ; the filtrate containing less of the 
imperfectly dissolved body than the unfiltered liquid. The 
higher the pressure the greater the proportion of such sub¬ 
stances which gets through ; and if the pressure is slight the 
water or other solvent may alone pass, leaving all the rest 
behind on the filter. Under moderate pressure the blood 
may thus lose by filtration only such bodies as water and 
salines ; while an increase of arterial pressure may lead to 


THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 


287 


the passage of albumen and fibrinogen. Under healthy con¬ 
ditions, for example, the urine contains no albumen, but any¬ 
thing considerably increasing the capillary pressure in the kid¬ 
neys will cause it to appear. Dialysis or osmosis has already 
been considered (p. 42); by it substances pass through the in- 
termolecular pores of a membrane independently of the press¬ 
ure on either side, and for its occurrence two liquids of dif¬ 
ferent chemical constitution are required, one on each side of 
the membrane. At least if diffusion takes place, as is proba¬ 
ble, between two exactly similar solutions, the amount and 
character of the substances passing opposite ways in a given 
time are exactly equal, so that no change is produced by the 
dialysis; which practically amounts to the same thing as if 
none occurred. AVhen a solution is placed on one side of a 
membrane allowing of dialysis, and pure water on the other, 
it is found that for every molecule of the dissolved body that 
passes one way a definite amount of water, called the en- 
dosmotic equivalent of that body, passes in the opposite 
direction. Crystalline bodies as a rule (haemoglobin is an 
exception) have a low endosmotic equivalent or are readily 
dialyzable; while colloids , such as gum and proteids, have a 
very high one, so that to get, by dialysis, a small amount of 
albumen through a membrane, a practically infinite amount 
of water must pass the other way. Accordingly, if we find 
such bodies in a secretion we cannot suppose that they have 
been derived from the blood by mere osmosis. 

The Chemical Processes of Secretion. As above pointed 
out certain secretions, called transudata, seem to be products 
of filtration and dialysis alone, containing only such sub¬ 
stances as those which are found in the blood-plasma, more 
or less altered in relative quantity by the ease or difficulty 
with which they severally passed through the layers met 
with on their way to the surface. But in many cases the 
composition of a secretion cannot be accounted for in this 
way ; it contains some specific element, either a substance 
which does not exist in the blood at all and must therefore 
have been added by the secreting membrane, or some body 
which, although existing in the blood, does so in such minute 
proportion, compared with that in which it is found in the 
secretion, that some special activity of the secreting cells is 
indicated: some affinity in them for these bodies by which 
they actively pick them up. 


288 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Each living cell, we have seen, is the seat of constant 
chemical activity, taking up materials from the medium 
about it, transforming and utilizing them, and sooner or 
later restoring their elements, differently combined, to the 
outer medium. By such means it builds up and maintains 
its living substance, and obtains energy to carry on its daily 
work. While this is true of all cells in the Body, we find 
certain groups in which chemical metabolism is the promi¬ 
nent fact—cells which are specialized for this purpose just 
as muscular fibre is for contraction or nerve-fibre for con¬ 
duction; and certain of these prominently metabolic tissues 
exist in the true glands and produce or collect the specific 
elements of their secretions. Their chemical processes are 
no doubt primarily directed to their own nutritive mainte¬ 
nance; they live primarily for themselves, but their nutritive 
processes are such that the bodies formed in them and sent 
into the secretion are such as to be useful to the rest of the 
cells of the community; or the bodies which they specially 
collect, and in a certain sense feed on, are those the removal 
of which from the blood is essential for the general good. 
Their individual nutritive peculiarities are utilized for the 
welfare of the whole Body. 

The Mode of Activity of Secretory Cells. If we con¬ 
sider the modes of activity of living cells in general, it be¬ 
comes clear that secretory cells may produce the specific 
elenlent of a secretion in either of two ways. They may, 
as a by-result of their living play of forces, produce chemical 
changes in the surrounding medium ; or they may build up 
certain substances in themselves and then set them free as 
specific elements. Yeast, for example, in a saccharine solu¬ 
tion causes the rearrangement into carbon dioxide, alcohol, 
glycerine and succinic acid, of many atoms of carbon, hydro¬ 
gen and oxygen which previously existed as sugar; and 
a very considerable quantity of sugar may be broken up b} T 
the activity of a few living yeast-cells. How the latter act 
we do not know with certainty, but most likely by picking cer¬ 
tain atoms out of the sugar molecule, and leaving the rest to 
fall down into simpler compounds. On the other hand, we find 
cells which form and store up in themselves large quantities 
of substances, which they afterwards liberate; starch, for 
instance, being formed and laid by in many fruit-cells, and 


THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 289 

afterwards dissolved and sent in solution to nourish the 
young plant. 

Gland-cells might a priori give rise to the specific ele¬ 
ments of secretions in either of these ways, and we have to 
seek in which manner they work. Do they simply act as fer¬ 
ments (however that is) upon the surrounding medium; or 
do they form or collect the bodies characterizing their 
secretion, first within their own substance, and then liberate 
them, either disintegrating or not at the same time? At 
present there is a large and an increasing mass of evidence 
in favor of the second view. .There is, no doubt, some 
reason to believe that every living cell can act more or 
less as a ferment upon certain solutions should they come 
into contact with it. (Not always, of course, as an alcoholic 
ferment, though even as regards that one fermentative power 
it seems very generally possessed by vegetable cells, andjhere 
is some evidence that alcohol is normally produced in small 
amount (and presumably by the fermentation of sugar) under 
the influence of certain of the living tissues of the Human 
Body. As regards distinctively secretory cells, however, the 
evidence is all the other way, and in many cases we can see 
the specific element collecting in the gland-cells before it is 
set free in the secretion. For example, in the oil-glands of 
the skin (Chapter XXVIII) we find the secreting cells, at 
first granular, nucleated, and protoplasmic, gradually under¬ 
going changes by which their protoplasm disappears and is 
replaced by oil-droplets, until finally the whole cell falls to 
bits and its detritus forms the secretion; the cells being re¬ 
placed by new ones constantly formed within the gland. In 
such cases the secretion is the ultimate product of the cell- 
life, the result of degenerative changes of old age occurring 
in it. 

In other cases, however, the liberation of the specific ele¬ 
ment is not attended with the destruction of the secreting 
cell; as an example we may take the pancreas, which is a 
large gland lying in the abdomen and forming a secretion 
used in digestion. Among others, this secretion possesses 
the power, under certain conditions, of dissolving proteids 
and converting them into dialyzable peptones (p. 10). This 
it owes to a specific element known as trypsin , the formation 
of which, or rather of its forerunner trypsinogen, within the 
gland-cells can be traced with the microscope. 



290 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The pancreas, like the majority of the glands connected 
with the alimentary canal, has an intermittent activity, de¬ 
termined by the presence or absence of food in various parts 
of the digestive tract. If the organ be taken from a recently 
killed dog which has fasted thirty hours and, after proper 
preparation, be stained with carmine and examined micro¬ 
scopically, we get specimens of what we may call the “ rest¬ 
ing gland ”—a gland which has not been secreting for some 
time. In these it will be seen that the cells lining the secret¬ 
ing recesses present two very distinct zones: an outer, next 
the basement membrane which combines with the coloring 
matter and is not granular, and an inner which is granular 
and does not pick up the carmine. The granules we shall 
find to be indications of the presence of a trypsin-yielding 
substance formed in the cells. 

If another dog be kept fasting until it has a good appetite 
and be then allowed to eat as much meat as it will, the animal 
will commonly take so much that the stomach will only be emp¬ 
tied at the end of about twenty hours. This period may, so 
far as the pancreas is concerned, be divided into two. From 
the time the food enters the stomach and on for about ten 
hours,the gland secretes abundantly; after that the secretion 
dwindles, and by the end of the second ten hours has nearly 
ceased. We have, then, a time during which the pancreas is 
working hard, followed by a period in which its activity is 
very little, but during which it is abundantly supplied with 
food-materials. The pancreas taken from an animal at the 
end of the first period and prepared for microscopic exami¬ 
nation will be found different from that taken from a dog 
killed at the end of the second digestion period, and also 
from the resting gland. Towards the end of the period of 
active work the gland-cells are diminished in size and the 
proportions of the granular and non-granular zones are quite 
altered. The latter now occupies most of the cell, while 
the granular non-staining inner zone is greatly diminished. 
During the secretion there is, therefore, a growth of the non- 
granular and a destruction of the granular zone; and the 
latter process rather exceeding the former, the whole secret¬ 
ing cell is diminished in size. During the second digestive 
period, when secretion is languid, exactly a reverse process 
takes place. The cells increase in size so as to become larger 
than those of the resting gland; and this growth is almost 


THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 


291 


entirely due to the granular zone which now occupies most 
of the cell. 

These facts suggest that during secretion the granular 
part of the cells is used up: but that, simultaneously, the 
deeper non - granular zone, being formed from materials 
yielded by the blood, gradually renews the granular. Dur¬ 
ing active secretion the breaking down of the latter to 
yield the specific element occurs faster than its regenera¬ 
tion; in a later period, however, when the secretion is ceas¬ 
ing, the whole cell grows and, especially, the granular zone is 
formed faster than it is disintegrated; hence the great in¬ 
crease of that part of the cell. If this be so, then we ought 
to find some relationship between the digestive activity of an 
infusion or extract of the gland and the size of the granular 
zones of the cells; and it has been shown that such exists; 
the quantity of trypsin which can be obtained from a pan¬ 
creas being proportionate to the size of that portion of its 
cells. 

The trypsin, however, does not exist in the cells ready 
formed, but only a body which yields it under certain cir¬ 
cumstances, and called trypsinogen. 

If a perfectly fresh pancreas be divided into halves and 
one portion immediately minced and extracted with glyce¬ 
rine, while the other is laid aside for twenty-four hours in a 
warm place and then similarly treated, it will be found that 
the first glycerine extract has no power of digesting proteids, 
while the second is very active. In other words, the fresh 
gland does not contain trypsin, but only something which 
yields it under some conditions; among others, on being 
kept. The inactive glycerine extract of the fresh gland is, 
however, rich in trypsinogen: for if a little acetic acid be 
added to it, trypsin is formed and the extract becomes 
powerfully digestive. 

We may, then, sum up the life of a pancreas-cell in this 
way. It grows by materials derived from the blood and first 
laid down in the non-granular zone. This latter, in the ordi¬ 
nary course of the cell-life, gives rise to the granular zone; 
and in this is a store of trypsinogen produced by the active 
metabolisms of the cell. When the gland secretes, the tryp¬ 
sinogen is converted into trypsin and set free in the secre¬ 
tion; but in the resting gland this transformation does not 
occur. During secretory activity, therefore, the chemical 


292 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


processes taking place in the cell are different from those at 
other periods; and we have next to consider how this change 
in the mode of life of the cells is brought about. 

Influence of the Nervous System upon Secretion. 
When the gland is active it is fuller of blood than when at 
rest: its arteries are dilated and its capillaries gorged so that 
it gets a brighter pink color; this extra blood-supply might 
be the primary cause of the altered metabolism. Again, the 
activity of the pancreas is under the influence of the nervous 
system, as proved not only by the reflex secretion called forth 
when food enters the stomach, but also by the fact that 
electrical stimulation of the medulla oblongata will cause the 
gland to secrete. The nervous system may, however, only 
act through the nerves governing the calibre of the gland 
arteries, and so but indirectly on the secreting cells; -while 
on the other hand it is possible that nerve-fibres act directly 
upon the gland-cells and, controlling their nutritive pro¬ 
cesses, govern the production of the trypsin. To decide be¬ 
tween the relative importance of these possible agencies we 
must pass to the consideration of other glands; since the 
question can only be decided by experiment upon the lower 
animals, and the position of the pancreas and the difficulty’ 
of getting at its .nerves without such severe operations as 
upset the physiological condition of the animal furnish ob¬ 
stacles to its study which have not yet been overcome. 

In certain other glands, however, we find conclusive evi¬ 
dence of a direct action of nerve-fibres upon the secreting 
elements. When the sciatic nerve of a cat is stimulated 
electrically, the balls of its feet sweat. Under ordinary cir¬ 
cumstances they become at the same time red and full of 
blood; but that this congestion is a factor of subsidiary im¬ 
portance as regards secretion is proved by the facts that stim¬ 
ulation of the nerve is still able to excite the gland-cells and 
cause sweating in a limb which has been amputated ten or 
fifteen minutes (and in which therefore no circulatory changes 
can occur) and also by the cold sweats, with a pallid skin, of 
phthisis and the death-agony. It is, however, with reference 
to the submaxillary and parotid salivary glands that our in¬ 
formation is most precise. 

When the mouth is empty and the jaws at rest the sali¬ 
vary secretion is comparatively little: but a sapid substance 
placed on the tongue will cause a copious flow. The phe- 


THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 


2m 


nomenon is closely comparable to the production of a reflex 
muscular contraction. A stimulus acting upon an irritable 
tissue excites through it certain afferent nerve-fibres; these 
excite a nerve-centre, which in turn stimulates efferent fibres; 
going to a muscle in the one case, to a gland in the other. 
It will be useful to consider again for a moment what occurs 
in the case of the muscle, taking account only of the efferent 
fibres and the parts they act upon. 

When a muscle in the Body is made to contract reflexly, 
through its nerve, two events occur in it. One is the short¬ 
ening of the muscular fibres; the other is the dilatation of 
the muscular arteries; every muscular nerve contains two 
sets of fibres, one motor and one vaso-dilator, and normally 
both act together. In this case, however, it is clear that the 
activities of both, though correlated, are essentially inde¬ 
pendent. The contraction is not due to the greater blood- 
flow, for not only can an excised muscle entirely deprived of 
blood be made to contract by stimulating its nerves, but in 
an animal to which a small dose of curari—the arrow-poison 
of certain South American Indians—has been given, stimu¬ 
lation of the nerve will cause the vascular dilatation but no 
muscular contraction: the curari paralyzing the motor fibres, 
but, unless in large doses, leaving the vaso-dilators intact. 
The muscular fibres themselves are unacted upon by the poi¬ 
son, as is proved by their ready contraction when directly 
stimulated by an electric shock. 

Now let us return to the salivary glands and see how 
far the facts are comparable. The main nerve of the sub¬ 
maxillary gland is known as the chorda tympani. If it be 
divided in a narcotized dog, and a tube placed in the gland- 
duct, no saliva will flow. But on stimulating the peripheral 
end of the nerve (that end still connected with the gland) 
an abundant secretion takes place. At the same time there 
is a great dilatation of the arteries of the organ, much more 
blood than before flowing through it in a given time: the 
chorda obviously then contains vaso-dilator fibres. Now in 
this case it might very well be that the process was different 
from that in a muscle. It is conceivable that the secretion 
may be but a filtration due to increased pressure in the gland 
capillaries, consequent on dilatation of the arteries supplying 
them. If a greater filtration into the lymph spaces of the 
gland took place, this liquid might then merely ooze on 


294 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


through, the secreting cells into the commencing ducts and, 
as it passed through, dissolve out and carry on from the cells 
the specific organic elements of the secretion. Of these, in 
the submaxillary of the dog at least, mucin is the most im¬ 
portant and abundant. That, however, the process is quite 
different, and that there are in the gland true secretory fibres 
in addition to the vaso-dilator, just as in the muscle there are 
true motor fibres, is proved by other experiments. 

If the flow of liquid from the excited gland were merely 
the outcome of a filtration dependent on increased blood- 
pressure in it, then it is clear that the pressure of the secre¬ 
tion in the duct could never rise above the pressure in the 
blood-vessels of the gland. Now it is found, not only that 
the gland can be made to secrete in a recently decapitated 
animal, in which of course there is no blood-pressure, but 
that, when the circulation is going on, the pressure of the 
secretion in the duct can rise far beyond that in the gland 
arteries. Obviously, then, the secretion is no question of 
mere filtration, since a liquid cannot filter against a higher 
pressure. Finally, the proof that the vascular dilatation is 
quite a subsidiary phenomenon has been completed by show¬ 
ing that we can produce all the increased blood-flow through 
the gland without getting any secretion—that just as in a 
muscle nerve we can, by curari, paralyze the motor fibres 
and leave the vaso-dilators intact, so we can by atropin, the 
active principle of deadly nightshade, get similar phenomena 
in the gland. In an atropized animal stimulation of the 
chorda produces vascular dilatation but not a drop of secretion. 
Bringing blood to the cells abundantly will not make them 
drink; we must seek something more in the chorda than the 
vaso-dilator fibres—some proper secretory fibres; that the 
atropin acts upon them and not upon the gland-cells is shown, 
as in the muscle, by the fact that the cells still are capable of 
activity when stimulated otherwise than through the chorda 
tympani. For example, by stimulation of the sympathetic 
fibres going to the gland. 

So far, then, we seem to have good evidence of a direct 
action of nerve-fibres upon the gland-cells. But even that is 
not the whole matter. It is extremely probable, if not cer¬ 
tain, that there are two sets of secretory fibres in the gland- 
nerves: a set which so acts upon the cells as to make them 
pass on more abundantly the transudation elements of the 


THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 295 


secretion (the water and mineral salts), and another, quite 
different, which governs the chemical transformations of the 
cells so as to make them produce mucin from mucigen pre¬ 
viously stored in them, in a way comparable to the production 
of trypsin from trypsinogen in the active pancreas. These 
latter fibres may be called “ trophic,” since they directly con¬ 
trol the cell metabolism: while the former may be called 
“ transudatory ” fibres. Some of the evidence which leads to 
thiscouclusionis a little complex, but it is worth while to con¬ 
sider it briefly. In the first place, on stimulation of the 
chorda of an unexhausted gland (that is, a gland not over¬ 
fatigued by previous work) the following points can be 
noted:— 

With increasing strength of the stimulus the quantity of 
the secretion, that is of the water poured out in a unit of 
time, increases ; at the same time the mineral salts also in¬ 
crease, but more rapidly, so that their percentage in a rap¬ 
idly formed secretion is greater than in a more slowly 
formed, up to a certain limit. The percentage of organic 
constituents of the secretion also increases up to a limit; but 
soon ceases to rise, or even falls again, while the water and 
salts still increase. This of course is readily intelligible; 
since the water and salts can be derived continually from the 
blood, while the specific elements, coming from the gland- 
cells, may be soon exhausted; and so far the experiment 
gives no evidence of the existence of distinct nerve-fibres 
for the salts and water, and for the specific elements: all 
vary together with the strength of the stimulus applied to 
the nerve. But under slightly different circumstances their 
quantities do not run parallel. The proportion of specific 
elements in the secretion is largely dependent on whether 
the gland has been previously excited or not. Prior stimula¬ 
tion, not carried on of course to exhaustion, largely increases 
the percentage of organic matters in the secretion produced 
by a subsequent stimulation; but has no effect whatever on 
the quantities of water and salts. These are governed en¬ 
tirely by the strength of the second stimulation. Here, 
then, we find that under similar circumstances the transuda¬ 
tory and specific elements of the secretion do not vary to¬ 
gether; and are therefore probably dependent upon different 
exciting causes. And the facts might lead us to suspect 
that there are in the chorda, besides the vaso-dilator, two 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


296 

other sets of fibres: one governing the salts and water, and 
the other the specific elements of the secretion. So far the 
evidence is, perhaps, not quite conclusive; but experiments 
upon the parotid gland of the dog put the matter beyond a 
doubt. 

The submaxillary gland receives fibres from the sympa¬ 
thetic system, as well as the chorda tymjpani from the cerebro¬ 
spinal. Excitation of the sympathetic fibres causes the 
gland to secrete, but the saliva poured out is different from 
that following chorda stimulation, which is in the dog abun¬ 
dant and comparatively poor in organic constituents, and 
accompanied by vascular dilatation: while the “ sympathetic 
saliva,” as it is called, is less abundant, very rich in mucin, 
and accompanied by constriction of the gland arteries. 
According to the above view we might suppose that the 
chorda contains many transudatory and few trophic fibres, 
and the sympathetic many trophic and few transudatory. 
It might, however, well be objected that the greater rich¬ 
ness in organic bodies of the sympathetic saliva was really 
due to the small quantity of blood reaching the gland, when 
that nerve was stimulated. This might alter the nutritive 
phenomena of the cells and cause them to form mucin in 
unusual abundance, in which case the trophic influence of 
the nerve would be only indirect. Experiments on the 
parotid preclude this explanation. That gland, like the sub¬ 
maxillary, gets nerve-fibres from two sources: a cerebral and 
a sympathetic. The latter enter the gland along its artery, 
while the former, originating from the glosso-pharyngeal, 
run in a roundabout course to the gland. Stimulation of the 
cerebral fibres causes an abundant secretion, rich in water 
and salts, but with hardly any organic constituents. At the 
same time it produces dilatation of the gland arteries. Stim¬ 
ulation of the sympathetic causes contraction of the parotid 
gland arteries and no secretion at all. Nevertheless it causes 
great changes in the gland-cells. If it be first stimujated 
for a while and then the cerebral gland-nerve, the resulting 
secretion may be ten times as rich in organic bodies as that 
obtained without previous stimulation of the sympathetic; 
and a similar phenomenon is observed if the two nerves be 
stimulated simultaneously. So that the sympathetic nerve, 
though unable of itself to cause a secretion, brings about 
great chemical changes in the gland-cells. It is a distinct 


THE SECRETORY TISSUES AND ORGANS. 297 


trophic nerve. This conclusion is confirmed by histology. 
Sections of the gland after prolonged stimulation of the sym¬ 
pathetic show its cells to be quite altered in appearance, and 
in their tendency to combine with carmine, when compared 
cither with those of the resting gland or of the gland which 
has been made to secrete by stimulating its glosso-pharyngeal 
branch alone. 

We have still to meet the objection that the sympathetic 
fibres may be only indirectly trophic, governing the meta¬ 
bolism of the cells through contraction of the blood-vessels. 
If this were so, cutting off or diminishing the blood-supply 
of the gland in any way ought to have the same result as 
stimulation of its sympathetic fibres. Experiment shows that 
such is not the case and reduces us to a direct trophic influ¬ 
ence of the nerve. When the arteries are closed and the cere¬ 
bral gland-nerve stimulated, it is found that the percentage of 
organic constituents in the secretion is as low as usual; it re¬ 
mains almost exactly the same whether the arteries are open 
or closed or have been previously open or closed. We must 
conclude that the peculiar influence of the sympathetic does 
not depend upon its vaso-constrictor fibres. 

These observations make it clear that the phenomena of 
secretion are dependent on very complex conditions, at least 
in the salivary glands and presumably in others. Primarily 
dependent upon filtration and dialysis from the blood-vessels 
and upon the physiological character of the gland-cells, both 
of these factors are, we find, controlled by the nervous system, 
such secreting cells being no more automatic than striped 
muscle; and the facts also give us important evidence of the 
power of the nervous system to influence cell nutrition directly. 
In other simpler cases, secretion seems to be a mere direct re¬ 
sult of the growth and life of the secreting cell; for example 
the formation, storage and discharge of fatty matters by the 
oil-glands of the skin. 

Summary. By secretion proper is meant the separation 
of such substances from the blood as are poured out on free 
surfaces of the Body, whether external or internal. In its 
simplest form it is merely a physical process dependent on fil¬ 
tration and dialysis; for example, the elimination of carbon 
dioxide from the surfaces of the lungs, and very watery liquid 
poured out on the surface of the serous membranes. Such 
secretions are known as transudata, and their amount is only 


298 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


indirectly controlled by the nervous system, through the in¬ 
fluence of the latter upon the circulation of the blood; they 
are however dependent on the structure of the cells concerned, 
so that the characters of the transudata and their quantity are 
altered when the cells are diseased. After death, too, the 
process of dialysis through such cells is different from that 
during life, for the living cell controls to a certain extent the 
nature and amount of the substances which it will allow to 
pass through it. The cells lining such surfaces are not, how¬ 
ever, secretory tissues in any true sense of the word. In 
other cases the lining cells are thicker, and more actively 
concerned in the process; they are then usually spread over 
the recesses of a much folded membrane, so that the whole 
is rolled up into a compact organ called a gland , the secre¬ 
tion of which may contain only transudation elements (as 
for example that of the lachrymal glands which form the 
tears) or may contain a specific element , formed in the 
gland by its cells, in addition to transudation elements. 
In both cases the activity of the organ may be influenced 
by the nervous system, usually in a reflex manner ( e.g . the 
watering of the eyes when the eyeball is touched and the 
saliva poured into the mouth when food is tasted), but may 
also be otherwise excited, as for example the flow of tears 
under the influence of those changes of the central nervous 
system which are associated with sad emotions, or the water¬ 
ing of the mouth at the thought of dainty food. The nerves 
going to such glands, besides controlling their blood-vessels, 
act upon the gland-cells; one set governing the amount of 
transudation of water and salines which shall take place 
through them, and another (in the case of glands producing 
secretions with one or more specific elements) controlling the 
production of these, by starting new chemical processes in 
the cells by which a substance built up in them during rest 
is converted into the specific element, which is soluble in and 
carried off by the transudation elements. What the specific', 
element of a gland shall be, or whether its secretion contain 
any, is dependent on the nature of its special cells; how 
much transudation and how much specific element shall be 
secreted at any time is controlled by the nervous system; 
just as the contractility of a muscle depends on the endow¬ 
ments of muscular tissue, and whether it shall rest or con¬ 
tract—and if the latter, how powerfully—upon its nerve. 


CHAPTER XX. 


THE INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE BODY. 

The Material Losses of the Body. All day long while 
life lasts each of us is losing something from his Body. The 
air breathed into the lungs becomes in them laden with 
carbon dioxide and water vapor, which are carried off with 
it when it is expired. The skin is as constantly giving off 
moisture, the total quantity in twenty-four hours being con¬ 
siderable, even when the amount passed out at any one time 
is so small as to be evaporated at once and so does not collect 
as drops of visible perspiration. The kidneys again are con¬ 
stantly at work separating water and certain crystalline ni- 
trogeneous bodies from the blood, along with some mineral 
salts. The product of kidney activity, however, not being 
forthwith carried to the surface but to a reservoir, in which 
it accumulates and which is only emptied at intervals, the ac¬ 
tivity of those organs appears at first sight intermittent. If to 
these losses we add certain other waste substances passed into 
the alimentary canal and got rid of along with the undigested 
residue of the food, and the loss of hairs and of dried cells 
from the surface of the skin, it is clear that the total amount 
of matter daily removed from the Body is considerable. The 
actual quantity varies with the individual, with the work 
done, and with the nature of the food eaten; but the follow¬ 
ing table (p. 300) gives approximately that of the more im¬ 
portant daily material losses of an average man. 

The living Body thus loses daily in round numbers 4 kilo¬ 
grams of matter (9 lbs.) and, since it is unable to create new 
matter, this loss must be compensated for from the exterior 
or the tissues would soon dwindle away altogether; or at least 
until they were so impaired that life came to an end. After 
death the losses would be of a different kind, and their quan¬ 
tity much more dependent upon surrounding conditions; but 
except under very unusual circumstances the wasting away 
would still continue in the dead Body. Moreover, the compo- 

299 


300 


TEE HUMAN BODY. 


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INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE BODY. 301 


sition of the daily wastes of the living Body is tolerably con¬ 
stant; it does not simply lose a quantity of matter weighing 
so much, but a certain amount of definite kinds of matter, 
carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on; and these same sub¬ 
stances must be restored to it from outside, in order that life 
may be continued. To give a stone to one asking for bread 
might enable him, if he swallowed it, to make up the weight 
of matter lost in twenty-four hours; but bread would be 
needed to keep him alive. The Body not only requires a 
supply of matter from outside, but a supply of certain definite 
kinds of matter. 

The Losses of the Body in Energy. The daily expendi¬ 
ture of matter by the living Body is not the only one: as 
continuously it loses in some form or another energy , or the 
power of doing work; often as mechanical work expended in 
moving external objects, but even when at rest energy is con¬ 
stantly being lost to the Body in the form of heat, by radia¬ 
tion and conduction to surrounding objects, by the evaporation 
of water from the lungs and skin, and by removal in warm 
excretions. Unless the Body can make energy it must there¬ 
fore receive a certain supply of it also from the exterior, or it 
would very soon cease to carry on any of its vital work; it 
would be unable to move and would cool down to the temper¬ 
ature of surrounding objects. The discoveries of this century 
having shown that energy is as indestructible and uncreatable 
{see Physics) as matter, we are led to look for the sources of 
the supply of it to the Body; and finding that the living Body 
daily receives it and dies when the supply is cut off, we no 
longer suppose, with the older physiologists, that it works by 
means of a mysterious vital force existing in or created by it; 
but that getting energy from the outside it utilizes it for its 
purposes—for the performance of its nutritive and other living 
work—and then returns it to the exterior in what the physi¬ 
cists know as a degraded state; that is, in a less utilizable 
condition. While energy like matter is indestructible it is, 
unlike matter, transmutable; iron is always iron and gold 
always gold; neither can by any means which we possess be 
converted into any other form of matter; and so the Body, 
needing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen to build it 
and to cover its daily losses, must be supplied with those very 
substances. As regards energy this is not the case. While 
the total amount of it in the universe is constant, its form is 


302 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


constantly subject to change—and that one in which it enters 
the Body need not be that in which it exists while in it, nor 
that in which it leaves it. Daily losing heat and mechanical 
work the Body does not need, could not in fact much utilize 
energy, supplied to it in these forms; but it does need energy 
of some form and in amount equivalent to that which it loses. 

The Conservation of Energy. The forms of energy yet 
discovered are not nearly so numerous as the kinds of matter. 
Still we all know several of them; such as light, heat, sound, 
electricity, and mechanical work; and most people nowadays 
know that some of these forms are interconvertible, so that 
directly or indirectly we can turn one into another. In such 
changes it is found that a definite amount of one kind always 
disappears to give rise to a certain quantity of the other; or, 
in other words, that so much of the first form is equivalent 
to so much of the second. In a steam-engine, heat is pro¬ 
duced in the furnace; when the engine is at work all of this 
energy does not leave it as heat; some goes as mechanical 
work, and the more work the engine does the greater is the 
difference between the heat generated in the furnace and that 
leaving the machine. If, however, we used the work for rub¬ 
bing two rough surfaces together we could get the heat back 
again, and if (which of course is impossible in practice) we 
could avoid all friction in the moving parts of the machine, 
the quantity thus restored would be exactly equal to the 
excess of the heat generated in the furnace over that leaving 
the engine. Having turned some of the heat into mechanical 
work we could thus turn the work back into heat again, and 
find it yield exactly the amount which seemed lost. Or we 
might use the engine to drive an electro-magnetic machine 
and so turn part of the heat liberated in its furnace first intp 
mechanical work and that into electricity; and if we chose to 
use the latter with the proper apparatus, we could turn more 
or less of it into light, and so have a great part of the energy 
which first became conspicuous as heat in the engine furnace, 
now manifested in the form of light at some distant point. 
In fact, starting with a given quantity of one kind of energy, 
we may by proper contrivances turn all or some of it into 
one or more other forms; and if we collected all the final 
forms and retransformed them into the first, we should have 
exactly the amount of it which had disappeared when the 
other kinds appeared. This law, that energy can change its 


INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE BODY. 303 

form but that its amount is invariable, that it cannot be created 
or destroyed but simply transmuted, is known as the law of 
the Conservation of Energy (see Physics), and, like the inde¬ 
structibility of matter, lies at the basis of all scientific con¬ 
ceptions of the universe, whether concerned with animate or 
inanimate objects. 

Since all forms of energy are interconvertible it is con¬ 
venient in comparing amounts of different kinds to express 
them in terms of some one kind, by saying how much of that 
standard form the given amount of the kind spoken of would 
give rise to if completely converted into it. Since the most 
easily measured form of energy is mechanical work this is 
commonly taken as the standard form, and the quantities of 
others are expressed by saying how great a distance against 
the force of gravity at the earth’s surface a given weight could 
be raised by the energy in question, if it were all spent in 
lifting the weight. The units of mechanical work being the 
kilogrammeter or the foot-pound, the mechanical equivalent 
of any given kind of energy is the number of kilogrammeters 
or foot-pounds of work its unit quantity would perform if 
converted into mechanical work and used to raise a weight. 
For example the unit quantity of heat is that necessary to 
raise one kilogram of water one degree centigrade in temper¬ 
ature; or sometimes, in books written in English, the quan¬ 
tity necessary to warm one pound of water one degree Fahren¬ 
heit. When therefore we say that the mechanical equivalent 
of heat is 423 kilogrammeters we mean that the quantity of 
heat which would raise one kilogram of water in temperature 
from 4° C. to 5° C. would, if all turned into mechanical work, 
be able to raise one kilogram 423 meters against the attraction 
of the earth; and conversely, that this amount of mechanical 
work if turned into heat would warm a kilogram of water 
one degree centigrade. The mechanical equivalent of heat, 
taking the Fahrenheit thermometric scale and using feet and 
pounds as measures, is 772 foot-pounds. 

Potential and Kinetic Energy. At times energy seems 
to be lost. Ordinarily we only observe it when it is doing 
work and producing some change in matter: but sometimes 
it is at rest, stored away and producing no changes that we 
recognize and thus seems to have been destroyed. Energy at 
work is known as kinetic energy; energy at rest, not produc¬ 
ing changes in matter, is called 'potential energy. Suppose a 


304 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


stone pulled up by a string and left suspended in the air. 
We know a certain amount of energy was used to lift it; but 
while it hangs we have neither heat nor light nor mechanical 
work to represent it. Still the energy is not lost; we know 
we have only to cut the string and the weight will fall, and 
striking something give rise to heat. Or we may wind up a 
spring and keep it so by a catch. In winding it up a certain 
amount of energy in the form of mechanical work was used 
to alter the form of the spring. Until the catch is removed 
this energy remains stored away as potential energy: but we 
know it is not lost. Once the spring is let loose again it may 
drive a clock or a watch, and in so doing will perform again 
just so much work as was spent in coiling it; and when the 
watch has run down this energy will all have been turned 
into other forms—mainly heat developed in the friction of 
the parts of the watch against one another: but partly also 
in producing movements of the air, a portion of which we 
ean readily observe in the sound of its ticking. The law of 
the conservation of energy does not say, then, that either the 
total potential or the total kinetic energy in the universe is 
constant in amount: but that the sum of the two is invariable, 
while constantly undergoing changes from kinetic to potential 
and vice versa: and from one form of kinetic to another. 

The Energy of Chemical Affinity. Between every two 
chemical atoms which are capable of entering into combina¬ 
tion there exists a certain amount of potential energy; when 
they unite this energy is liberated, usually in the form of heat, 
and once they have combined a certain amount of kinetic 
energy must be spent to pull them apart again; this being 
exactly the amount which was liberated when they united. 
The more stable the compound formed the more kinetic 
energy appears during its formation, and the more must be 
spent to break it up again. One may imagine the separated 
atoms as two balls pushed together by springs, the strength 
of the spring being proportionate to the degree of their 
chemical affinity. Once they are let loose and permitted to 
strike together the potential energy previously represented by 
the compressed springs disappears, and in its place we have 
the kinetic energy, represented by the heat developed when 
the balls strike together. To pull them apart again, against 
the springs, to their original positions, just so much mechani¬ 
cal work must be spent as is the equivalent of that amount 


INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE BODY. 305 


of heat which appeared when they struck; and thus kinetic 
energy will again become latent in breaking up the compound 
represented by the two in contact. The energy liberated in 
chemical combination is the most important source of that 
used in our machines: and also of that spent by the living 
Body. 

The Relation between the Matters Removed from the 
Body daily and the Energy Spent by it. A working loco¬ 
motive is, we know, constantly losing matter to the exterior 
in the form of ashes and gaseous products of combustion, the 
latter being mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor. The 
engine also expends energy, not only in the form of heat 
radiated to the air, but as mechanical work in drawing the 
cars against the resistance offered by friction or sometimes, 
up an incline, by gravity. Now the engine-driver knows that 
there is a close relationship between the losses of matter and 
the expenditure of energy, so that he has to stoke his furnace 
more frequently and allow a greater draft of air through it in 
going up a gradient than when running on the level. The 
more work the engine does the more coals and air it needs to 
make up for its greater waste. If we seek the cause of this 
relationship between work and waste, the first answer natu¬ 
rally is that the engine is a machine the special object of 
which is to convert heat into mechanical work, and so the 
more work it has to do the more heat is required for conver¬ 
sion, and consequently the more coals must be burnt. This, 
however, opens the question of the source of the heat—of all 
that vast amount of kinetic energy which is liberated in the 
furnace; and to answer this we must consider in what forms 
matter and energy enter the furnace, since the energy liber¬ 
ated there must be carried in somehow from outside. For 
present purposes coals may be considered as consisting of 
carbon and hydrogen, both of which substances tend to 
forcibly combine with oxygen at high temperatures, forming 
in the one case carbon dioxide and in the other water. The 
oxygen necessary to form these compounds being supplied 
by the air entering the furnace, all the potential energy of 
chemical affinity which existed between the uncombined 
elements becomes kinetic, and is liberated as heat when the 
combination takes place. The energy utilized by the engine 
is therefore supplied to it in the form of potential energy, 
associated with the uncombined forms of matter which reach 


306 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the furnace. Once the carbon and hydrogen have combined 
with oxygen they are no longer of any use as liberators of 
energy; and the compounds formed if retained in the furnace 
would only clog it and impede farther combustion; they are 
therefore got rid of as wastes through the smoke-stack. The 
engine, in short, receives uncombined elements associated 
with potential energy; and loses combined elements (which 
have lost the energy previously associated with them) and 
kinetic energy: it,so to speak, separates the energy from the 
matter with which it was connected, utilizes it, and gets rid 
of the exhausted matter. The amount of kinetic energy 
liberated during such chemical combinations is very great; 
a kilogram of carbon uniting with oxygen to form carbon 
dioxide sets free 8080 units of heat, or calories. During the 
combination of oxygen and hydrogen to form water even 
more energy is liberated, one kilogram of hydrogen when 
completely burnt liberating more than thirty-four thousand 
of the same units. The mechanical equivalent of this can be 
calculated if it is remembered that one heat unit = 423 
kilogram meters. 

Turning now to the living Body we find that its income 
and expenditure agree very closely with those of the steam- 
engine. It receives from the exterior substances capable of 
entering into chemical union; these combine in it and liber¬ 
ate energy; and it loses kinetic energy and the products of 
combination. From the outside it takes oxygen through the 
lungs, and oxidizable substances (in the form of foods) 
through the alimentary canal; these combine under the con¬ 
ditions prevailing in the living cells just as the carbon and 
oxygen, which will not unite at ordinary temperatures, com¬ 
bine under the conditions existing in the furnace of the 
engine; the energy liberated is employed in the work of the 
Body, while the useless products of combination are got rid 
of. To explain, then, the fact that our Bodies go on working 
we have no need to invoke some special mysterious power 
resident in them and capable of creating energy, a vital force 
having no relation with other natural forces, such as the 
older physiologists used to imagine. The Body needs and 
gets a supply of energy from the exterior just as the steam- 
engine does, food and air being to one what coals and air are 
to t-he other; each is a machine in which energy is liberated 
by chemical combinations and then used for special work; 


INCOME AND EXPEND1TUIIE OF THE BODY. 307 


the character of which depends upon the peculiarities of 
mechanism which utilizes it in each case, and not upon any 
peculiarity in the energy utilized or in its source. The Body 
is, however, a far more economical machine than any steam- 
engine; of all the energy liberated in the latter only a small 
fraction, about one eighth, is usefully employed, while our 
Bodies can utilize for the performance of muscular work 
alone one fifth of the whole energy supplied to them ; leaving 
out of account altogether the nutritive and other work carried 
on in them, and the heat lost from them. 

The Conditions of Oxidation in the Living Body. Al¬ 
though the general principles applied in the Body and the 
steam-engine for getting utilizable energy are the same, in 
minor points obvious differences are found between the two. 
In the first place the coals of an engine are oxidized only at 
a very high temperature, one which would be instantly fatal 
to our Bodies, which, although warm when compared with 
the bulk of inanimate objects, are very slow fires when com¬ 
pared with a furnace. Chemistry and physics, however, 
teach us that this difference is quite unimportant so far as 
concerns the amount of energy liberated. If magnesium 
wire be ignited in the air it will become white-hot, flame, and 
leave at the end of a few seconds only a certain amount of 
incombustible rust or magnesia, which consists of the metal 
combined with oxygen. The heat and light evolved in the 
process represent of course the energy which, in a potential 
form, was associated with the magnesium and oxygen before 
their combination. We can, however, oxidize the metal in a 
different way, attended with no evolution of light and no 
very perceptible rise of temperature. If, for instance, we 
leave it in wet air it will become gradually turned into mag¬ 
nesia without having ever been hot to the touch or luminous 
to the eye. The process will, however, take days or weeks; 
and while in this slow oxidation just as much energy is liber¬ 
ated as in the former case, it now all takes the form of heat; 
and instead of being liberated in a short time is spread over 
a much longer one, as the gradual chemical combination 
takes place. The slowly oxidizing magnesium is, therefore, 
at no moment noticeably hot, since it loses its heat to sur¬ 
rounding objects as fast as it is generated. The oxidations 
occurring in our Bodies are of this slow kind. An ounce of 
arrowroot oxidized in a fire, and in the Human Body, would 


308 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


liberate exactly as much energy in one case as the other, but 
the oxidation would take place in a few minutes and at a 
high temperature in the former, and slowly, at a lower tem¬ 
perature, in the latter. In the second place, the engine dif¬ 
fers from the living Body in the fact that the oxidations in it 
all take place in a small area, the furnace, and so the tem¬ 
perature there becomes very high; while in our Bodies the 
oxidations take place all over, in each of the living cells; 
there is no one furnace or hearth where all the energy is lib¬ 
erated for the whole and transferred thence in one form or 
another to distant parts: and this is another reason why no 
one part of the Body attains a very high temperature. 

The Fuel of the Body. This is clearly different from 
that of an ordinary engine: no one could live by eating coals. 
This difference, again, is subsidiary; a gas-engine requires 
different fuel from an ordinary locomotive; and the Body re¬ 
quires a somewhat different one from either. It needs, as 
foods, substances which can, in the first place, be absorbed 
from the alimentary canal and carried to the various tissues; 
and, in the second, can be oxidized at a low temperature in 
the blood or tissues, or- can be converted by the living cells 
into compounds which can be so oxidized. With some trivial 
exceptions, all substances which fulfil these conditions are 
complex chemical compounds, and to understand their utili¬ 
zation in the Body we must extend a little the statements 
above made as to the liberation of energy in chemical com¬ 
binations. The general law maybe stated thus: Energy is 
liberated whenever chemical union takes place: and whenever 
more stable compounds are formed from less stable ones , in 
which the constituent atoms were less firmly held together. 
Of the liberation by simple combination we have already seen 
an instance in the oxidation of carbon in a furnace; but the 
union need not be an oxidation. Every one knows how hot 
quicklime becomes when it is slaked; the water combining 
strongly with the lime, and energy being liberated in the 
form of heat during the process. Of the liberation of energy 
by the breaking down of a complex compound, in which the 
atoms are only feebly united, into simpler and stabler ones, 
we get an example in alcoholic fermentation. During that 
process grape-sugar is broken down into more stable com¬ 
pounds, mainly carbon dioxide and alcohol, while oxygen is 
at the same time taken up. To pull apart the carbon, hydro- 


INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE BODY. 309 

gen, and oxygen of the sugar molecule requires a certain 
expenditure of kinetic energy: but in the simultaneous for¬ 
mation of the new and stabler compounds a greater amount of 
energy is set free, and the difference appears as heat, so that 
the brewer frequently has to cool his vats with ice. It is by 
processes like this latter, rather than by direct combinations, 
that most of the kinetic energy of the Body is obtained; the 
complex proteids and fats and starches and sugar taken as 
food being broken down (usually with concomitant oxida¬ 
tion) into simpler and more stable compounds. 

Oxidation by Successive Steps. In the furnace of an 
engine the oxidation takes place completely at once. The 
carbon and hydrogen leaving it, if it is well managed, are 
each in the state of their most stable oxygen compound. 
But this need not be so: we might first oxidize the carbon so 
as to form carbon monoxide, CO, and get a certain amount of 
heat; and then oxidize the carbon monoxide farther so as to 
form carbon dioxide, C0 2 , and get more heat. If we add 
together the amounts of heat liberated in each stage, the sum 
will be exactly the quantity which would have been obtained 
if the carbon had been completely burnt to the state of car¬ 
bon dioxide at first. Every one who has studied chemistry 
will think of many similar cases. As the process is impor¬ 
tant physiologically, we may take another example, say the 
oxidation of alcohol. This may be burnt completely and di¬ 
rectly, giving rise to carbon dioxide and water— 

C 3 H 6 0 + 0 6 = 2C0 2 + 3H 2 0 

1 Alcohol. 6 Oxygen. 2 Carbon dioxide. 3 Water. 

But instead of this we can oxidize the alcohol by stages, get¬ 
ting at each stage only a comparatively small amount of heat 
evolved. By combining it first with one atom of oxygen, we 
get aldehyde and water— 

C 2 H 6 0 + 0 = C 2 H 4 0 + H 2 0 

1 Alcohol. 1 Oxygen. 1 Aldehyde. 1 Water. 

Then we add an atom of oxygen to the aldehyde and get 
acetic acid (vinegar)— 


c 2 h 4 o + o = c 2 h 4 o 2 

1 Aldehyde. 1 Oxygen. 1 Acetic acid. 


310 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


And finally we may oxidize the acetic acid so as to get carbon 
dioxide and water— 

C 2 H 4 0,+ 0 4 = 2C0 2 + 2H 3 0. 

We get, in both cases, from one molecule of alcohol, two 
of carbon dioxide and three of water; and six atoms of oxy¬ 
gen are taken up. In each stage of the gradual oxidation a 
certain amount of heat is evolved; and the sum of these is 
exactly the amount which would have been evolved by burn¬ 
ing the alcohol completely at once. 

The food taken into the Body is for the most part oxi¬ 
dized in this gradual manner; the products of imperfect 
combustion in one set of cells being carried off and more 
completely oxidized in another set, until the final products, 
no longer capable of further oxidation in the Body, are car¬ 
ried to the lungs, or kidneys, or skin, and got rid of. A great 
object of physiology is to trace all intermediate compounds 
between the food which enters and the waste products which 
leave; to find out just how far chemical degradation is carried 
in each organ, and what substances are thus formed in vari¬ 
ous parts: but at present this part of the science is very im¬ 
perfect. 

The Utilization of Energy in the Human Body. In 

the steam-engine energy is liberated as heat; some of the heat 
is used to evaporate water and expand the resulting steam; 
and then the steam to drive a piston. But in the living Body 
it is very probable (indeed almost certain) that a great part 
of the energy liberated by chemical transformations does not 
first take the form of heat; though some of it does. This, 
again, does not affect the general principle: the source of 
energy is essentially the same in both cases; it is merely the 
form which it takes that is different. In a galvanic cell 
energy is liberated during the union of zinc and sulphuric 
acid, and we may so arrange matters as to get this energy as 
heat; but on the other hand we may lead much of it off, as 
a galvanic current, and use it to drive a magneto-electric 
machine before it has taken the form of heat at all. In fact, 
that heat may be used to do mechanical work we must reduce 
some of it to a lower temperature: an engine needs a con¬ 
denser of some kind as well as a furnace; and, other things 
being equal, the cooler the condenser the greater the propor- 


INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF THE BODY. 311 

tion of the whole heat liberated in the furnace which can be 
used to do work. Now in a muscle there is no condenser; its 
temperature is uniform throughout. So when it contracts 
and lifts a weight, the energy employed must be liberated in 
some other form than heat—some form which the muscular 
fibre can use without a condenser. 

Summary. The living Body is continually losing mat¬ 
ter and expending energy. So long as we regard it as work¬ 
ing by virtue of some vital force, the power of generating 
which it has inherited, the waste is difficult to account for, 
since it is far more than we can imagine as due merely to 
wear and tear of the working parts. When, however, we con¬ 
sider the nature of the income of the Body, and of its ex¬ 
penditure, from a cheinico-physical point of view, we get the 
clue to the puzzle. The Body does not waste because it 
works, but works because it wastes. The working power is 
obtained by chemical changes occurring in it, associated with 
the liberation of energy which the living cells utilize; and 
the products of these chemical changes, being no longer 
available as sources of energy, are passed out. The chemical 
changes concerned are mainly the breaking down of complex 
and unstable chemical compounds into simpler and more 
stable ones, with concomitant oxidation. Accordingly the 
material losses of the Body are highly or completely oxidized, 
tolerably simple, chemical compounds; and its material in¬ 
come is mainly uncombined oxygen and oxidizable substances, 
the former obtained through the lungs, the latter through 
the alimentary canal. In energy, its income is the potential 
energy of uncombined or feebly combined elements, which 
are capable of combining or of forming more stable com¬ 
pounds; and its final expenditure is kinetic energy almost 
entirely in the form of mechanical work and heat. Given 
oxygen, all oxidizable bodies will not serve to keep the Body 
alive and working, but only those which (1) are capable of 
absorption from the alimentary canal and (2) those which 
are oxidizable at the temperature of the Body under the influ¬ 
ence of protoplasm. Just as carbon and oxygen will not 
unite in the furnace of an engine unless the fire be lighted by 
the application of a match but, when once started, the heat 
evolved at one point will serve to bring about the conditions 
of combination through the rest of the mass, so the oxida¬ 
tions of the Body only occur under special conditions; and 


312 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


these are transmitted from parent to offspring. Every new 
Human Being starts as a portion of protoplasm separated 
from a parent and affording the conditions for those chemi¬ 
cal combinations which supply to living matter its working 
power: this serves, like the energy of the burning part of a 
fire to start similar processes in other portions of matter. At 
present we know nothing in physiology answering to the 
match which lights a furnace; those manifestations of energy 
which we call life are handed down from generation to gen¬ 
eration, as the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta from one 
watcher to another. Science may at some time teach us how 
to bring the chemical constituents of protoplasm into that 
combination in which they possess the faculty of starting 
oxidations under those conditions which characterize life; 
then we shall have learnt to strike the vital match. For 
the present we must be content to study the properties of 
that form of matter which possesses living faculties; since/ 
there is no satisfactory proof that it has ever been produced*; 
within our experience, apart from the influence of matter 
already living. ^How the vital spark first originated, how 7 
molecules of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen first 
united with water and salts to form protoplasm, we have no 
scientific data to ground a positive opinion upon, and such as 
we may have must rest upon other grounds. 


CHAPTER XX, 


FOODS. 

Foods as Tissue-formers. Hitherto we have considered 
foods merely as source of energy, but they are also required 
to build up the substance of the Body. From birth to man¬ 
hood we increase in bulk and weight, and that not merely by 
accumulating water and such substances, but by forming more 
bone, more muscle, more brain, and so on, from materials 
which are not necessarily bone or muscle or nerve-tissue. 
Alongside of the processes by which complex substances are 
broken down and oxidized and energy liberated, constructive 
processes take place by which new complex bodies are formed 
from simpler substances taken as food. A great part of the 
energy liberated in the Body is in fact utilized first for this 
purpose, since to construct complex unstable molecules, like 
those of protoplasm, from the simpler compounds taken into 
the Body, needs an expenditure of kinetic energy. Even 
after full growth, when the Body ceases to gain weight, the 
same synthetic processes go on; the living tissues are steadily 
broken down and constantly reconstructed, as we see illus¬ 
trated by the condition of a man who has been starved for 
some time, and who loses not only his power of doing work 
and of maintaining his bodily temperature but also a great 
part of his living tissues. If again fed properly he soon 
makes new fat and new muscle and regains his original mass. 
Another illustration of the continuance of constructive 
powers during the whole of life is afforded by the growth of 
the muscles when exercised properly. 

Since the tissues, on ultimate analysis, yield mainly car¬ 
bon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, it might be supposed 
a priori that a supply of these elements in the uncombined 
state would serve as material for the constructive forces of 
the Body to work with. Experience, however, teaches us 
that this is not the case, but that the animal body requires, 
for the most part, highly complex compounds for the con- 

313 


314 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


struction of new tissue elements. All the active tissues yield 
on analysis large quantities of proteids which, as pointed out 
in Chapter I, enter always into the structure of protoplasm. 
Now, so far as we know at present,* the animal body is unable 
to build up proteids from simpler compounds of nitrogen, 
although when given one variety of them it can convert that 
one into others, and combine them with other things to form 
protoplasm. Hence proteids are an essential article of diet, 
in order to replace the proteid of the living cells which is 
daily broken down and eliminated in the form of urea and 
other waste substances. Even albuminoids (p. 10), although 
so nearly allied to proteids, will not serve to replace them 
entirely in a diet; a man fed abundantly on gelatine, fats, 
and starches would starve as certainly, though not so quickly, 
as if he got no nitrogenous food at all: his tissue waste would 
not be made good, and he would at last be no more able to 
utilize the energy-yielding materials supplied to him than a 
worn-out steam-engine could employ the heat of a fire in its 
furnace. So, too, the animal is unable to take the carbon for 
the construction of its tissues, from such simple compounds 
as carbon dioxide.* Its constructive power is limited to the 
utilization of the carbon contained in more complex and less 
stable compounds, such as proteids, fats or sugars. 

Nearly all the tissue-forming foods must therefore consist 
of complex substances, and of these a part must be proteids, 
since the Body can utilize nitrogen for tissue formation only 
when supplied with it in that form. The bodies thus taken 
in are sooner or later broken down into simpler ones and 
eliminated; some at once in order to yield energy, others 
only after having first been built up into part of a living cell. 
The partial exceptions afforded by such losses to the Body as 
milk for suckling the young, or the albuminous and fatty 
bodies stored for the same purpose in the egg of a bird, are 
only apparent; the chemical degradation is only postponed, 
taking place in the body of the offspring instead of that of 
the parent. In all cases animals are thus, essentially, proteid 
consumers or wasters, and breakers down of complex bodies; 
the carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen which they take as foods 
in the form of complex unstable bodies, ultimately leaving 

* There is some reason to believe that some few of the lower animals 
which contain chlorophyl can manufacture proteids and utilize carbon 
dioxide. 



FOODS. 


315 


them in the simpler compounds, carbon dioxide, water, and 
urea; which are incapable of either yielding energy or build¬ 
ing tissue for any other animal and so of serving it as food. 
The question immediately suggests itself—How, since animals 
are constantly breaking up these complex bodies and cannot 
again build them, is the supply kept up ? For example, the 
supply of proteids, substances which cannot be made arti¬ 
ficially by any process which we know, and yet are necessary 
foods for all animals, and daily destroyed by them. 

The Food of Plants. As regards our own Bodies the 
question at the end of the last paragraph might perhaps be 
answered by saying that we get our proteids from the flesh 
of the other animals which we eat. But, then, we have to 
account for the possession of them by those animals; since 
they cannot make them from urea and carbon dioxide and 
water any more than we can. The animals eaten get them, 
in fact, from plants which are the great proteid formers of 
the world, so that the most carnivorous animal really depends 
for its most essential foods upon the vegetable kingdom; the 
fox that devours a hare in the long-run lives on the proteids 
of the herbs that the hare had previously eaten. All animals 
are thus, in a certain sense, parasites; they only do half of 
their own nutritive work, just the final stages, leaving all the 
rest to the vegetable kingdom and using the products of its 
labor ; and plants are able to meet this demand because they 
can live on the simple compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and 
nitrogen eliminated by animals, building up out of them new 
complex substances which animals can use as food. A green 
plant, supplied with ammonium salts, carbon dioxide, water, 
and some minerals, will grow and build up large quantities 
of proteids, fats, starches, and similar things; it will pull the 
stable compounds eliminated by animals to pieces, and build 
them up into complex unstable bodies, capable of yielding 
energy when again broken down. However, to do such work, 
to break up stable combinations and make from them less 
stable, needs a supply of kinetic energy which disappears in 
the process, being stored away as potential energy in the new 
compound; and we may ask whence it is that the plant gets 
the supply of energy which it thus utilizes for chemical con¬ 
struction, since its simple and highly oxidized foods can yield 
it none. It has been proved that for this purpose the green 
plant uses the energy of sunlight: those of its cells which con- 


316 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


tain the substance called chlorophyl (leaf green) have the power 
of utilizing energy in the form of light for the performance 
of chemical work, just as a steam-engine can utilize heat for the 
performance of mechanical work. Exposed to light, and re¬ 
ceiving carbon dioxide from the air, and water and ammonia 
(which is produced by the decomposition of urea) and other 
simple nitrogen compounds from the soil, the plant builds 
them up again, with the elimination of oxygen, into complex 
bodies like those which animals broke down with fixation of 
oxygen. Some of the bodies thus formed it uses for its own 
growth and the formation of new protoplasm, just as an animal 
does; but in sunlight it forms more than it uses, and the 
excess stored up in its tissues is used by animals. In the long- 
run, then, all the energy spent by our Bodies comes through 
millions of miles of space from the sun; but to seek the source 
of its supply there would take us far out of the domain of 
Physiology. 

Non-oxidizable Foods. Besides our oxidizable foods, a 
large number of necessary food-materials are not oxidizable, 
or at least are not oxidized in the Body. Typical instances 
are afforded by water and common salt. The use of these is 
in great part physical: the water, for instance, dissolves ma¬ 
terials in the alimentary canal, and carries the solutions 
through the walls of the digestive tube into the blood and 
lymph vessels, so that they can be carried from part to part; 
and it permits interchanges to go on by diffusion. The 
salines also influence the solubility and chemical interchanges 
of other things present with them. Serum albumen, the 
chief proteid of the blood, for example, is insoluble in pure 
water, but dissolves readily if a small quantity of neutral salts 
is present. Besides such uses the non-oxidizable foods have 
probably others, in what we may call machinery formation. 
In the salts which give their hardness to the bones and teeth, 
we have an example of such an employment of them: and to 
a less extent the same may be true of other tissues. The 
Body, in fact, is not a mere store of potential energy, but 
something more—it is a machine for the disposal of it in cer¬ 
tain ways; and, wherever practicable, it is clearly advanta¬ 
geous to have the purely energy-expending parts made of 
non-oxidizable matters, and so protected from change and 
the necessity of frequent renewal. The Body is a self-build¬ 
ing and self-repairing machine, and the material for this 



FOODS: 


317 


building and repair must be supplied in the food, as well as 
the fuels, or oxidizable foods, which yield the energy the 
machine expends; and while experience shows us that even 
for machinery construction oxidizable matters are largely 
needed, it is nevertheless a gain to replace them by non-oxi- 
dizable substances when possible; just as if practicable it 
would be advantageous to construct an engine out of mate¬ 
rials which would not rust, although other conditions deter¬ 
mine the use of iron for the greater part of it. 

Definition of Foods. Foods may be defined as substances 
which, when taken into the alimentary canal, are absorbed 
from it, and then serve either to supply material for the 
growth- of the Body , or for the replacement of matter ivhich 
has been removed from it, either after oxidation or without 
having Veen oxidized. Foods N to replace matters which have 
been oxidized must be themselves oxidizable; they are force- 
generators, but may be and generally are also tissue-formers; . 
and are nearly always complex organic substances derived 
from other animals or from plants. Foods to replace matters 
not oxidized in the Body are force-regulators, and are for the 
most part tolerably simple inorganic compounds. Among 
the force-regulators we must, however, include certain organic 
foods which, although oxidized in the Body and serving as 
liberators of energy, yet produce effects totally dispropor¬ 
tionate to the energy they set free, and for which effects they 
are taken. In other words, their influence as stimuli in excit¬ 
ing certain tissues to liberate energy, or as inhibitory agents 
checking the activity of parts, is more marked than their 
direct action as force-generators. As examples, we may take 
condiments: mustard and pepper are not of much use as 
sources of energy, although they no doubt yield some; we 
take them for their stimulating effect on the mouth and 
other parts of the alimentary canal, by which they promote 
an increased flow of the digestive secretions or an increased 
appetite for food. Thein and caffein, the active principles of 
tea and coffee, are taken for their stimulating effect on the 
nervous system, rather than for the amount of energy yielded 
by their own oxidation. 

Conditions which a Food must Fulfil. (1) A food 
must contain the elements which it is to replace in the Body: 
but that alone is not sufficient. The elements leaving the 
Body being usually derived from the breaking down of com- 


318 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


plex substances in it, tbe food must contain them either in 
the form of such complex substances, or in forms which the 
Body can build up into them, Free nitrogen and hydrogen 
are no use as foods, since they are neither oxidizable under 
the conditions prevailing in the Body (and consequently can¬ 
not yield it energy), nor are they capable of construction by 
it into its tissues. (2) Food after it has been swallowed is 
still in a strict sense outside the Body; the alimentary canal 
is merely a tube running through it, and so long as food lies 
there it does not form any part of the Body proper. Hence 
foods must be capable of absorption from the alimentary 
canal; either directly, or after they have been changed by the 
processes of digestion. Carbon, for example, is useless as 
food, not merely because the Body could not build it up into 
its own tissues, but because it cannot be absorbed from the 
alimentary canal. (3) Neither the substance itself nor any 
of the products of its transformation in the Body must be 
injurious to the structure or activity of any organ. If so it 
is a poison, not a food. 

Alimentary Principles. The articles which in common 
language we call foods are, in most cases, mixtures of several 
foodstuffs, with substances which are not foods at all. Bread, 
for example, contains water, salts, gluten (a proteid), some 
fats, much starch, and a little sugar; all true foodstuffs: but 
mixed with these is a quantity of cellulose (the chief chemical 
constituent of the walls which surround vegetable cells), and 
this is not a food since it is incapable of absorption from the 
alimentary canal. Chemical examination of all the common 
articles of diet shows that the actual number of important 
foodstuffs is but small: they are repeated in various propor¬ 
tions in the different things we eat, mixed with small quan¬ 
tities of different, flavoring substances, and so give us a pleas¬ 
ing variety in our meals; but the essential substances are 
much the same in the fare of the workman and in the 
" delicacies of the season.” These primary foodstuffs, which 
are found repeated in so many different foods, are known as 
“ alimentary principles”; and the physiological value of any 
article of diet depends on them far more than on the traces 
of flavoring matters which cause certain things to be espe¬ 
cially sought after and so raise their market value. The 
alimentary principles may be conveniently classified into 


FOODS. 


319 


proteids, albuminoids, hydrocarbons, carbohydrates, and inor¬ 
ganic bodies. 

Proteid or Albuminous Alimentary Principles. Of the 

nitrogenous foodstuffs the most important are proteids: they 
form an essential part of all diets, and are obtained both from 
animals and plants. The most common and abundant are 
myosin and syntonin, which exist in the lean of all meats; egg 
albumen; casein, found in milk and cheese; gluten and vege¬ 
table casein from various plants. 

Gelatinoid or Albuminoid Alimentary Principles. These 
also contain nitrogen, but cannot replace the proteids entirely 
as foods; though a man can get on with less proteids when he 
has some albuminoids in addition. The most important is 
gelatin , which is yielded by the white fibrous tissue of animals 
when cooked. On the whole the gelatinoids are not foods of 
high value, and the calf’s-foot jelly and such compounds^ 
often given to invalids, have not nearly the nutritive value 
they are commonly supposed to possess. 

Hydrocarbons [Fats and Oils). The most important are 
stearin, palmatin, and olein, which exist in various propor¬ 
tions in animal fats and vegetable oils; the more fluid contain¬ 
ing more olein. Butter contains also a little of a fat named 
butyrin. Fats are compounds of glycerine and fatty acids, 
and any such substance which is fusible at the temperature 
of the Body will serve as a food. The stearin of beef and 
mutton fats is not by itself fusible at the body temperature, 
but is mixed in those foods with so much olein as to be melted 
in the alimentary canal. Beeswax, on the other hand, is a 
fatty body which will not melt in the intestines and so passes 
on unabsorbed; although from its composition it would be 
useful as a food could it be digested. A distinction is some¬ 
times made between fats proper (the adipose tissue of ani¬ 
mals consisting of fatty compounds inclosed in albuminous 
cell-walls) and oils, or fatty bodies which are not so organized. 

Carbohydrates. These are mainly of vegetable origin. 
The most important are starch, found in nearly all vegetable 
foods ; dextrin ; gums ; grape-sugar, called also dextrose or 
glucose (into which starch is converted during digestion).; and 
cane-sugar. Sugar of milk and glycogen are alimentary prin¬ 
ciples of this group, derived from animals. All of them, like 
the fats, consist of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; but the per- 


320 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


centage of oxygen in them is much higher, there being 
one atom of oxygen for every two of hydrogen in their 
molecule. 

Inorganic Foods. Water; common salt; and the chlo¬ 
rides, phosphates, and sulphates of potassium, magnesium 
and calcium. More or less of these bodies, or the materials 
for their formation, exists in all ordinary articles of diet, so 
that we do not swallow them in a separate form. Phosphates, 
for example, exist in nearly all animal and vegetable foods; 
while other foods, as casein, contain phosphorus in combina¬ 
tions which in the Body yield it up to be oxidized to form 
phosphoric acid. The same is true of sulphates, which are 
partially swallowed as such in various articles of diet, and are 
partly formed in the Body by the oxidation of the sulphur of 
various proteids. Calcium salts are abundant in bread, and 
are also found in many drinking-waters. Water and table- 
salt form exceptions to the rule that inorganic bodies are 
eaten imperceptibly along with other things, since the Body 
loses more of each daily than is usually supplied in that way. 
It has, however, been maintained that salt, as such, is an 
unnecessary luxury; and there seems some evidence that 
certain savage tribes live without more than they get in the 
meat and vegetables they eat. Such tribes are, however, 
said to suffer especially from intestinal parasites; and there 
is no doubt that to civilized man the absence of salt is a great' 
privation. 

Calcium seems to be an essential constituent of all living 
cells and in some way closely connected with the manifestation 
of their activity. As previously mentioned the heart of a 
frog after thorough irrigation with dilute solution of sodium 
chloride ceases to beat, but resumes its pulsations when a 
minute trace of calcium chloride is added to the solution; 
and while ordinary serum restores the beat of such a washed- 
out heart, serum from which all its calcium has been removed 
does not. Moreover if defibrinated blood to which a little 
more sodium oxalate than is sufficient to precipitate all its 
calcium has been added, be circulated through the vessels of a 
muscle, the latter loses its contractility, apparently because 
the slight excess of oxalate precipitates the calcium of the 
muscle-fibres; for the contractility maybe restored by sup¬ 
plying some dissolved calcium chloride. Nerves treated simi¬ 
larly lose their irritability; and the eggs of some aquatic 


FOODS. 


321 


animals will not develop normally in water from which all 
calcium salts have been removed. 

Mixed. Foods. These, as already pointed out, include 
nearly all common articles of diet; they contain more than 
one alimentary principle. Among them we find great differ¬ 
ences; some being rich in proteids, others in starch, others in 
fats, and so on. The formation of a scientific dietary depends 
on a knowledge of these characteristics. The foods eaten by 
man are, however, so varied that we cannot do more than 
consider the most important. 

Flesh. This, whether derived from bird, beast, or fish, 
consists essentially of the same things—muscular fibres, 
connective tissue and tendons, fats, blood-vessels, and nerves. 
It contains several proteids, especially myosin; gelatin-yield¬ 
ing matters in the white fibrous tissue; stearin, palmatin, 
and olein as representatives of the fats; and a small amount of 
carbohydrates in the form of glycogen and grape-sugar, or 
some chemically allied substances. Flesh also contains much 
water and a considerable number of salines, the most important 
and abundant being potassium phosphate. Osmazome is a 
crystalline nitrogenous body which gives much of its taste to 
flesh; and small quantities of various similar substances 
exist in different kinds of meat. There is also more or less 
yellow elastic tissue in flesh; it is indigestible and useless as 
food. 

When meat is cooked its white fibrous tissue is turned 
into gelatin, and the whole mass becomes thus softer and 
more easily disintegrated by the teeth. When boiled some 
of the proteid matters of the meat pass out into the broth, 
and there in part coagulate and form the scum: this loss may 
be prevented in great part by putting the raw meat at once 
into boiling water which coagulates the surface albumen be¬ 
fore it dissolves out, and this keeps in the rest, while the 
subsequent cooking is continued slowly. In any case the 
myosin, being insoluble in water, remains behind in the boiled 
meat. In baking or roasting, all the solid parts of the flesh are 
preserved and certain agreeably flavored bodies are produced, 
as to the nature of which little is known. 

Eggs. These contain a large amount of egg albumen 
and, in the yolk, another proteid, known as vitellin. Also 
fats, and a substance known as lecithin, which is important 
as containing a considerable quantity of phosphorus. Leci- 


322 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


thin, or rather a substance yielding it, is an important con¬ 
stituent of the nervous tissues. 

Milk contains a proteid, caseinogen ; several fats in the 
hutter; a carbohydrate, milk-sugar; much water; and salts, 
especially potassium and calcium phosphates. Butter consists 
mainly of the same fats as those in beef and mutton; but has 
in it about one per cent of a special fat, butyrin. In the milk 
it is disseminated in the form of minute globules which, for 
the most part, float up to the top when the milk is let stand 
and then form the cream . In this each fat-droplet is sur¬ 
rounded by a pellicle of albuminous matter; by churning, 
these pellicles are broken up and the fat-droplets then run to¬ 
gether to form the butter. Caseinogen is insoluble in water; 
in milk it is dissolved by the alkaline salts present. When 
milk is kept, its sugar ferments and gives rise to lactic acid, 
which neutralizes the alkali and precipitates the caseinogen 
as curds. In cheese-making the caseinogen is acted upon by 
a ferment (rennin) present in the extract of stomach used, 
and converted into tyrein which is precipitated: this clotting 
does not take place unless a calcium salt be present. Tyrein, 
which forms the main bulk of a true cheese, is different from 
the curd precipitated from milk by acids; cheese made from 
the latter does not “ ripen." Caseinogen is frequently called 
casein, which name should be given to the tyrein formed from 
caseinogen by ferment action. 

Vegetable Foods. Of these wheat affords the best. In 
1000 parts it contains 135 of proteids, 568 of starch, 46 of 
dextrin (a carbohydrate), 49 of grape-sugar, 19 of fats, and 
32 of cellulose, the remainder being water and salts. The 
proteid of wheat is mainly gluten, which when moistened 
with water forms a tenacious mass, and this it is to which 
wheaten bread owes its superiority. When the dough is 
made yeast is added to it, and produces a fermentation by 
which, among other things, carbon dioxide gas is produced. 
This gas, imprisoned in the tenacious dough, and expanded 
during baking, forms cavities in it and causes it to “rise” 
and make “light bread,” which is not only more pleasant to 
eat but more digestible than heavy. Other cereals may con¬ 
tain a larger percentage of starch, but none have so much 
gluten as wheat; when bread is made from them the carbon 
dioxide gas escapes so readily from the less tenacious dough 
that it does not expand the mass properly. Corn contains in 


FOODS. 


323 


1000 parts, 79 of proteids, 637 of starch, and from 50 to 87 
of fats; much more than any other kind of grain. Rice is 
poor in proteids (56 parts in 1000) but very rich in starch 
(823 parts in 1000). Peas and beans are rich in proteids 
(from 220 to 260 parts in 1000), and contain about half their 
weight of starch. Potatoes are a poor food. They contain a 
great deal of water and cellulose, and only about 13 parts of 
proteids and 154 of starch in 1000. Other fresh vegetables, 
as carrots, turnips, and cabbages, are valuable mainly for the 
salts they contain; their weight is mainly due to water, and 
they contain but little starch, proteids, or fats. Fruits, like 
most fresh vegetables, are mainly valuable for their saline 
constituents, the other foodstuffs in them being only present 
in small proportion. Some fruit or vegetable is, however, a 
necessary article of diet; as shown by the scurvy which used 
to prevail among sailors before fresh or canned vegetables 
and lime-juice were supplied to them. 

The Cooking of Vegetables. This is of more importance 
even than the cooking of flesh, since in most the main ali¬ 
mentary principle is starch, and raw starch is difficult of 
digestion. In plants starch is nearly always stored up in the 
form of solid granules, which consist of alternating layers of 
starch cellulose and starch granulose . The digestive fluids 
turn the starch into sugars which are soluble and can be 
absorbed from the alimentary canal, while starch itself can¬ 
not. These fluids act slowly and imperfectly on raw starch, 
and then only on the granulose; but when boiled, the starch 
granules swell up, and become more readily converted into 
sugars, and the starch cellulose is so altered that it too un¬ 
dergoes that change. When starch is roasted it is in part 
turned into a substance known as soluble starch which is read¬ 
ily dissolved in the alimentary canal. There is, therefore, a 
scientific foundation for the common belief that the crust of 
a loaf is more digestible than the crumb, and toast than ordi¬ 
nary bread. 

Alcohol. There are perhaps no common articles of diet 
concerning which more contradictory statements have been 
made than alcoholic drinks. This depends upon their pe¬ 
culiar position: according to circumstances alcohol may be a 
poison or be useful; when useful it may be regarded either 
as a force-regulator or a force-generator. It is sometimes a 
valuable medicine, but it does no good to the healthy body. 


324 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


If not more than two ounces (which would be contained in 
about four ounces of whiskey or two quarts of lager-beer) are 
taken in the twenty-four hours, they are completely oxidized 
in the Body and excreted as water and carbon dioxide. In 
this oxidation energy is of course liberated and can be util¬ 
ized. Commonly, however, alcohol is not taken for this pur¬ 
pose but as a force-regulator, for its influence on the nervous 
system or digestive organs, and it is in this capacity that it 
becomes dangerous. For not only may it be taken in quan¬ 
tities so great that it is not at all oxidized in the Body but is 
passed through it as alcohol, or even that it acts as a narcotic 
poison instead of a stimulant, but when taken in what is 
called moderation there can be no doubt that the constant 
“whipping up” of the flagging organs, if continued, must be 
dangerous to their integrity. Hence the daily use of alcohol 
merely in such quantities as to produce slight exhilaration or 
to facilitate work is by no means safe; though in disease 
■when the system wants rousing to make some special effort, 
the physician cannot dispense with it or some other similarly 
acting substance. In fact, as a force-generator alcohol may 
be advantageously replaced by other foods in nearly all cases; 
and there is no evidence that it helps in the construction of 
the working tissues, though its excessive use often leads to an 
abnormal accumulation of fat. Its proper use is as a “ whip,” 
and one has no more right to use it to the healthy Body than 
the lash to overdrive a willing horse. The physician is the 
proper person to determine whether it is wanted under any 
given circumstances. 

If alcohol is used as a daily article of diet it should be 
borne in mind that when concentrated it may chemically alter 
the proteids of the cells of the stomach with which it comes 
in contact, in the same sort of way, though of course to a 
much less degree, as it shrivels and dries up an animal pre¬ 
served in it. Dilute alcoholic drinks, such as claret and beer, 
are therefore far less baneful than whiskey or brandy, and 
these are, so far as direct action on the stomach is con¬ 
cerned, worse the less they are diluted. For the same reason 
alcoholic drinks are far more injurious on an empty stomach 
than after a meal. When the stomach is full the liquor 
is diluted, is more slowly absorbed, and, moreover, is largely 
used up in coagulating the proteids of the food instead 
of those of the gastric lining membrane. The old “three 


FOODS. 


325 


bottle ” men who drank their port-wine after a heavy dinner, 
got off far more safely than the modern tippler who is taking 
“nips” all day long, although the latter may imbibe a 
smaller quantity of alcohol in the twenty-four hours. By- far 
the best way, however, is to avoid alcohol altogether in health. 
If the facts lead us to conclude that under some conditions 
it may be to a certain extent a food, it is a dangerous one: 
even in what we may call “physiological ” quantities, or such 
amounts as can be totally oxidized in the Body. 

The Advantage of a Mixed Diet. The necessary quan¬ 
tity of daily food depends upon that of the material daily lost 
from the Body, and this varies both in kind and amount with 
the energy expended and the organs most used. In children 
a certain excess beyond this is required to furnish materials 
for growth. Although it is impossible to lay down with per¬ 
fect accuracy how much daily food any individual requires, 
still the average quantity may be derived from the table of 
daily losses given on page 300, which shows that a healthy 
man needs daily in assimilable forms about 274 grams (4220 
grains) of carbon and 19 grams (292 grains) of nitrogen. 
The daily loss of hydrogen, which is very great (352 grams 
or 5428 grains), is for the most part made good by water which 
has been drunk and, so to speak, merely filtered through the 
Body, after having assisted in the solution and transference 
through it of other substances. About 300 grams (4620 
grains) of water containing 33.3 grams (513 grains) of hy¬ 
drogen are, however, formed in the Body by oxidation, and 
the hydrogen for this purpose must be supplied in the form 
of some oxidizable foodstuff, whether proteid, fat, or carbo¬ 
hydrate. The oxygen eliminated is mainly received from the 
air through the lungs, but some is taken in combination in 
the food. 

Since proteid foods contain carbon, nitrogen and hydro¬ 
gen, life may be kept up on them alone, with the necessary 
salts, water and oxygen; but such a form of feeding would 
be anything but economical. Ordinary proteids contain in 
100 parts (p. 9) about 52 of carbon and 15 of nitrogen, so a 
man fed on them alone would get about 3£ parts of carbon 
for every 1 of nitrogen. His daily losses are not in this ratio, 
but about that of 274 grams (4220 grains) of carbon to 20 
grams (308 grains) of nitrogen, or as 13.7 to 1; and so to get 
enough carbon from proteids far more than the necessary 


326 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


amount of nitrogen must be taken. Of dry proteids 52? 
grams (8116 grains) would yield the necessary carbon, but 
would contain 79 grams (1217 grains) of nitrogen; or four 
times more than is required to cover the necessary daily 
losses of that element. Fed on a purely proteid diet a man 
would, therefore, have to digest a vast quantity to get enough 
carbon, and in eating and absorbing it, as well as in getting 
rid of the extra nitrogen which is useless to him, a great deal 
of unnecessary labor would be thrown upon the various or¬ 
gans of his Body. Similarly, if a man were to live on bread 
alone he would burden his organs with much useless work. 
For bread contains but little nitrogen in proportion to its 
carbon, and so, to get enough of the former, far more carbo¬ 
naceous substances than could be utilized would have to be 
eaten, digested and eliminated daily. 

Accordingly, we find that mankind in general employ a 
mixed diet when they can get it, using richly proteid sub¬ 
stances to supply the nitrogen needed, but deriving the car¬ 
bon mainly from non-nitrogenous foods of the fatty or carbo¬ 
hydrate groups, and so avoiding excess of either. For instance, 
lean beef contains about \ of its weight of dry proteid, which 
contains 15 per cent of nitrogen. Consequently the 133 
grams (2048 grains) of proteid which would be found in 532 
grams (1 lb. 3 oz.) of lean meat would supply all the nitrogen 
needed to compensate for a day’s losses. But the proteid 
contains 52 per cent of carbon, so the amount of it in the 
above weight of fatless meat would be 69 grams (1062 grains) 
of carbon, leaving 205 grams (3157 grains) to be got either 
from fats or carbohydrates. The necessary amount would be 
contained in about 256 grams (3942 grains) of ordinary fats 
or 460 grams (7084 grains) of starch; hence either of these, 
with the above quantity of lean meat, would form a far better 
diet, both for the purse and the system, than the meat alone. 

As already pointed out, nearly all common foods contain 
several foodstuffs. Good butcher’s meat, for example, con¬ 
tains nearly half its dry weight of fat; and bread, besides 
proteids, contains starch, fats and sugar. In none of them, 
however, are the foodstuffs mixed in the physiologically best 
proportions, and the practice of employing several of them at 
each meal, or different ones at different meals, during the day, 
is thus not only agreeable to the palate but in a high degree 
advantageous to the Body. The strict vegetarians who do 


FOODS. 


327 


not employ even such substances as eggs, cheese and milk, 
but confine themselves to a purely vegetable diet (such as is 
always poor in proteids), daily take far more carbon than they 
require, and are to be congratulated on their excellent diges¬ 
tions which are able to stand the strain. Those who use eggs, 
cheese, etc., can of course get on very well, since such sub¬ 
stances are extremely rich in proteids, and supply the nitro¬ 
gen needed without the necessity of swallowing the vast bulk 
of food which must be eaten in order to get it from plants 
directly. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


THE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 

General Arrangement. The alimentary canal is essen¬ 
tially a tube running through the Body (Fig. 2) and lined by 
a vascular membrane, most of which is specially adapted for 
absorption; it communicates with the exterior at three points 
(the nose, the mouth, and the anal aperture), at which the 
lining mucous membrane is continuous with the general outer 
integument. Supporting the absorbent membrane are layers 
which strengthen the tube, and are in part muscular and, by 
their contractions, serve to pass materials along it from one 
end to the other. In the walls of the canal are numerous 
blood and lymphatic vessels which carry off the matters ab¬ 
sorbed from its cavity; and there also exist in connection with 
it numerous glands, whose function it is to pour into it various 
secretions which exert a solvent influence on such foodstuffs as 
would otherwise escape absorption. Some of these glands are 
minute and imbedded in the walls of the alimentary tube it¬ 
self, but others (such as the salivary glands) are larger and lie 
away from the main channel, into which their products are 
carried by ducts of various lengths. 

The alimentary tube is not uniform but presents several 
dilatations on its course; nor is it straight, since, being much 
longer than the Body, a large part of it is packed away by 
being coiled up in the abdominal cavity. 

Subdivisions of the Alimentary Canal. The mouth¬ 
opening leads into a chamber containing the teeth and 
tongue, the mouth-cham.ber or buccal cavity. This is suc¬ 
ceeded by the pharynx or throat-cavity , which narrows at 
the top of the neck into the gullet or oesophagus ; this runs 
down through the thorax and, passing through the dia¬ 
phragm, dilates in the upper part of the abdominal cavity 
into the stomach. Beyond the stomach the channel again 
narrows to form a long and greatly coiled tube, the small 
intestine , which terminates by opening into the large intes- 

828 


THE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 329 


tine, much shorter although wider than the small, and ter 
minating by an opening on 
the exterior. 

The Mouth - cavity (Fig. 

105) is bounded in front and 
on the sides by the lips and 
cheeks, below by the tongue, 
k, and above by the palate; 
which latter consists of an an¬ 
terior part, l, supported by 
bone and called the hard pal¬ 
ate, and a posterior, /, con¬ 
taining no bone, and called 
the soft palate. The two can 
readily be distinguished by ap¬ 
plying the tip of the tongue 
to the roof of the mouth and 
drawing it backwards. The 
hard palate forms the parti¬ 
tion between the mouth and 
nose. The soft palate arches 
down over the back of the 
mouth, hanging like a cur¬ 
tain between it and the pharynx, 
as can be seen by holding the 
mouth open in front of a 
looking-glass. From the mid¬ 
dle of its free border a conical 
process, the uvula, hangs 
down. 

The Teeth. Immediately 
within the cheeks and lips are two semicircles, formed by the 
borders of the upper and lower jaw-bones, which are covered 
by the gums, except at intervals along their edges where 
they contain sockets in which the teeth are implanted. 
During life two sets of teeth are developed; the first or milk 
set appears soon after birth and is shed during childhood, 
when the second or permanent set appears. 

The teeth differ in minor points from one another, but 
in each three parts are distinguishable; one, seen in the mouth 
and called the crown of the tooth; a second, imbedded in the 
jaw-bone and called the root or fang; and between the two, 



Fig. 105.—The month, nose and pt 
>f t 


ha- 

rynx, with the commencement of'the 
gullet and larynx, as exposed by a 
section, a little to the left of the me¬ 
dian plane of the head, a, vertebral 
column ; 6, gullet : c, windpipe ; d, 
larynx ; e , epiglottis : /. soft palate; 
p, opening of Eustachian tube ; fc, 
tongue ; l. hard palate; m, the sphe¬ 
noid bone on the base of the skull; n, 
the fore part of the cranial cavity; 
u. p. q, the tubinate bones of the out¬ 
er side of the left nostril-chamber. 





330 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


embraced by the edge of the gum, is a narrowed portion, the 
neck or cervix . From differences in their forms and uses 
the teeth are divided into incisors , canines , bicuspids and 
molars, arranged in a definite order in each jaw. Beginning 
at the middle line we meet in each half of each jaw with, 
successively, two incisors, one canine, and two molars in the 
milk set; making twenty altogether in the two jaws. The 
teeth of the permanent set are thirty-two in number, eight in 
each half of each jaw, viz.—beginning at the middle line— 
two incisors, one canine, two bicuspids, and three molars. 
The bicuspids, or premolars, of the permanent set replace the 
milk molars, while the permanent molars are new teeth added 
on as the jaw grows, and not substituting any of the milk- 
teeth. The hindmost permanent molars are often called the 
wisdom-teeth. 

Characters of Individual Teeth. The incisors (Fig. 106) 
are adapted for cutting the food. Their crowns are chisel¬ 
shaped and have sharp horizontal cutting edges, which be¬ 
come worn away by use so that they are bevelled off behind 
in the upper row, and in the opposite direction in the lower. 
Each has a single long fang. The canines (Fig. 107) are 
somewhat larger than the incisors. Their crowns are thick 
and somewhat conical, having a central point or cusp on the 
cutting edge. In dogs, cats and other carnivora the canines 
are very large and adapted for seizing and holding prey. 
The bicuspids or premolars (Fig. 108) are rather shorter than 



Fig. 106.—An incisor tooth.. 

Fig. 107.—A canine or eye tooth. 

Fig. 108.—A bicuspid tooth seen from its outer side: the inner cusp is, accord¬ 
ingly, not visible. 

Fig. 109.—A molar tooth. 


the canines and their crowns are somewhat cuboidal. Each 
has two cusps, an outer towards the cheek, and an inner on 
the side turned towards the interior of the mouth. The fang 


THE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 331 


is compressed laterally, and has usually a groove partially 
subdividing it into two. At its tip the separation is often 
complete. The molar teeth or grinders (Fig. 109) have large 
crowns with broad surfaces, on which are four or five project¬ 
ing tubercles, which roughen them and make them better 
adapted to crush the food. Each has usually several fangs. 
The milk-teeth only differ in subsidiary points from those of 
the same names in the permanent set. 

The Structure of a Tooth. If a tooth be broken open, a 
cavity extending through both crown and fang will be found 
in it. This is filled during life with a soft vascular pulp, and 
hence is known as the “ pulp-cavity ” (c, Fig. 110 ). The hard 
parts of the tooth disposed around the pulp-cavity consist of 
three different tissues. Of these one immediately surrounds 
the cavity and makes up most of the bulk of the tooth; it is 
dentine ( 2 , Fig. 110 ); covering the dentine on the crown is 
the enamel ( 1 , Fig. 110) and, on the fang, the cement 
(3, Fig. 110 ). 

The pulp-cavity opens below by a narrow aperture at the 
tip of the fang, or at the tip of each if the tooth have more 
than one. The pulp consists mainly of connective tissue, but 
its surface next the dentine is covered by a layer of columnai 
cells. Through the opening on the fang blood-vessels and 
nerves enter the pulp. 

The dentine (ivory) yields on analysis the same materials 
as bone but is somewhat harder, earthy matters constituting 
72 per cent of it as against CG per cent in bone. Under the 
microscope it is recognized by the fine dentinal tubules 
which, radiating from the pulp-cavity, perforate it through¬ 
out, finally ending in minute branches which open into 
irregular cavities, the interglobular spaces , which lie just 
beneath the enamel or cement. At their widest ends, close 
to the pulp-cavity, the dentinal tubules are only about 0.005 
millimeter ( 4 -jVo °f an inch) in diameter. The cement is 
much like bone in structure and composition, possessing 
lacunae and canaliculi, but rarely any Haversian canals. It is 
thickest at the tip of the fang and thins away towards the 
cervix. Enamel is the hardest tissue in the Body, yielding 
on analysis only from two per cent to three per cent of 
organic matter, the rest being mainly calcium phosphate and 
carbonate. Its histological elements are minute hexagonal 
prisms, closely packed, and set on vertically to the surface of 


332 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the subjacent dentine. It is thickest over the free end of the 
crown, until worn away by use. Covering the enamel in 



Fig. 110.—Section through a premolar tooth of the cat still imbedded in its 
socket. 1, enamel; 2, dentine; 3, cement; 4, the gum; 5, the bone of the lower 
jaw; c, the pulp-cavity. 


unworn teeth is a thin structureless horny layer, the enamel 
cuticle . 

The Tongue (Fig. Ill) is a muscular organ covered by 
mucous membrane, extremely mobile, and endowed not 
only with a delicate tactile sensibility but with the terminal 
organs of the special sense of taste; it is attached by its root 
to the hyoid bone. On its upper surface are numerous small 





TEE ALIM ENT ART CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 333 

eminences or papillce, such as are found more highly devel¬ 
oped on the tongue of a cat, where they may be readily felt. 
On the human tongue there are three forms of papillse, the 
circumvallate , the fungiform, and the filiform. The circum- 
vallate papillae, 1 and 2, the largest and least numerous, are 
from seven to twelve in number and lie near the root of the 
tongue arranged in the form of a V with its open angle turned 



Fig. Ill .—The upper surface of the tongue with part of the pillars of the fauces 
and the tonsils. 1, 2, circumvallate papillae : H. fungiform papillae ; 4, filiform 
papillae ; 6, mucous glands ; 7, tonsils ; 8, tip of epiglottis. 

forwards. Each is an elevation of the mucous membrane, 
covered by epithelium, and surrounded by a trench. On the 
sides of these papillae, imbedded in the epithelium, are many 
small oval bodies richly supplied with nerves and sup- 



334 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


posed to be concerned in the sense of taste, and hence called 
the taste-buds (Chap. XXXV). The fungiform papillae, 3, 
are rounded elevations attached by somewhat narrowed stalks, 
and found all over the middle and fore part of the upper 
surface of the tongue. They are easily recognized on the 
living tongue by their bright red color. The filiform papillae? 
most numerous and smallest, are scattered all over the dorsum 
of the tongue except near its base. Each is a conical emi¬ 
nence covered by a thick horny layer of epithelium. It is 
these papillae which are so highly developed on the tongues 
of Carnivora, and serve them to scrape bones clean of even 
such tough structures as ligaments. 

In health the surface of the tongue is moist, covered by 
little “ fur,” and in childhood of a red color. In adult life 
the natural color of the tongue is less red, except around the 
edges and tip; a bright-red glistening tongue being then, 
usually a symptom of disease. When the digestive organs 
are deranged the tongue is commonly covered with a thick 
yellowish coat, composed of a little mucus, some cells of 
epithelium shed from the surface, and numerous microscopic 
organisms known as bacteria; and there is frequently a “ bad 
taste in the mouth.” The whole alimentary mucous mem¬ 
brane is in close physiological relationship; and anything 
disordering the stomach is likely to produce a “furred 
tongue.” 

The Salivary Glands. The saliva, which is poured into 
the mouth and which, mixed with the secretion of minute 
glands imbedded in its lining membrane, moistens it, is 
secreted by three pairs of glands, the 'parotid , the submaxil¬ 
lary and the sublingual. The parotid glands lie in front of 
the ear behind the ramus of the lower jaw; each sends its 
secretion into the mouth by a tube known as S/enon’s duct, 
which crosses the cheek and opens opposite the second upper 
molar tooth. In the disease known as mumps * the parotid 
glands are inflamed and enlarged. The submaxillary glands 
lie between the halves of the lower jaw-bone, near its angles, 
and their ducts open beneath the tongue near the middle line. 
The sublingual glands lie beneath the floor of the mouth, 
covered by its mucous membrane, between the back part of 
the tongue and the lower jaw-bone. Each has many ducts 


* Parotitis , in technical language. 






TEE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 335 

(8 to 20), some of which join the submaxillary duct, while 
the rest open separately in the floor of the mouth. 

The Fauces is the name given to the aperture which can 
be seen at the back of the mouth below the soft palate (Fig. 
105), and leading into the pharynx. It is bounded above by 
the soft palate and uvula, below by the root of the tongue, 
and on the sides by muscular elevations covered by mucous 
membrane, which reach from the soft palate to the tongue. 
These elevations are the pillars of the fauces. Each bifur¬ 
cates below, and in the hollow between its divisions lies a 
tonsil (7, Fig. Ill), a soft rounded body about the size of an 
almond, and containing numerous minute glands which form 
mucus. 

The tonsils not unfrequently become enlarged during a 
cold or sore throat, and then pressing on the Eustachian tube 
(Chap. XXXIY), which leads from the pharynx to the mid¬ 
dle ear, keep it closed and produce partial deafness. 

The Pharynx or Throat-cavity (Fig. 105). This por¬ 
tion of the alimentary canal may be described as a conical 
bag with its broad end turned upwards towards the base of 
the skull, and its narrow end downwards and passing into the 
gullet. Its front is imperfect, presenting openings which 
lead into the nose, the mouth, and (through the larynx 
and windpipe) the lungs. Except during swallowing or 
speech the soft palate hangs down between the mouth and 
pharynx; during deglutition it is raised into a horizontal 
position and separates an upper or respiratory portion of the 
pharynx from the rest. Through this upper part, therefore, 
air alone passes, entering it from the posterior ends of the 
two nostril-chambers; while through the lower portion both 
food and air pass, one on its way to the gullet, b, Fig. 105, 
the other through the larynx, d, to the windpipe, c ; when 
a morsel of food “ goes the wrong way ” it takes the latter 
course. Opening into the upper portion of the pharynx on 
each side is an Eustachian tube, g: so that the apertures 
leading out of it are seven in number; the two posterior 
nares, the two Eustachian tubes, the fauces, the opening of 
the larynx, and that of the gullet. At the root of the tongue, 
over the opening of the larynx, is a plate of cartilage, the 
epiglottis , e , which can be seen if the mouth is widely opened 
and the back of the tongue pressed down by some such thing 
as the handle of a spoon. During swallowing the epiglottis 


336 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


is pressed down like a lid over the air-tube and helps to keep 
food or saliva from entering it. In structure the pharynx 
consists essentially of a bag of connective tissue lined by 
mucous membrane, and having muscles in its walls which 
drive the food on. 

The (Esophagus or Gullet is a tube commencing at the 
lower termination of the pharynx and which, passing on 
through the neck and chest, ends below the diaphragm by 
joining the stomach. In the neck it lies close behind the 
windpipe. It consists of three coats—a mucous membrane 
within; next, a submucous coat of areolar connective tissue; 
and, outside, a muscular coat made up of two layers, an inner 
with transversely and an outer with longitudinally arranged 
fibres. In and beneath its mucous membrane are numerous 
small mucous glands whose ducts open into the tube. 

The Stomach (Fig. 112) is a somewhat conical bag placed 
transversely in the upper part of the abdominal cavity. Its 

larger end is turned to the 
left and lies close beneath 
the diaphragm; opening 
into its upper border, 
through the cardiac orifice 
at a, is the gullet d. The 
narrower right end is con¬ 
tinuous at c with the small 
intestine; the aperture be¬ 
tween the two is the pyloric 
orifice. The pyloric end of 
the stomach lies lower in the 
abdomen than the cardiac, 
and is separated from the 
diaphragm by the liver (see Fig. 1). The concave border be¬ 
tween the two orifices is known as the small curvature , and 
the convex as the great curvature , of the stomach. From 
the latter hangs down a fold of peritoneum ( ne , Fig. 1) 
known as the great omentum. It is spread over the rest of 
the abdominal contents like an apron. After middle life 
much fat frequently accumulates in the omentum, so that it 
is largely responsible for the ‘‘fair round belly with good 
capon lin’d.” The protrusion b to the left side of the cardiac 
orifice, Fig. 112, is the fundus or great cut de sac. The size 
of the stomach varies greatly with the amount of food in it; 



Fig. 112.—The stomach, d, lower end of 
the gullet ; a. position of the cardiac aper¬ 
ture ; b . the fundus ; c, the pylorus ; e. the 
commencement of the small intestine; 
along a. b, c, the great curvature ; between 
the pylorus and d, the lesser curvature. 


THE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 337 


just after a moderate meal it is about ten inches long, by five 
wide at its broadest part. 

Structure of the Stomach. This organ has four coats, 
known successively from without in as the serous, the mus¬ 
cular, the submucous, and the mucous. The serous coat is 
formed by a reflection of the peritoneum, a double fold of 
which slings the stomach; after separating to envelop it the 
two layers again unite and, hanging down beyond it, form the 
great omentum. The muscular coat (Fig. 59) consists of 
unstriped muscular tissue arranged in three layers: an outer, 
longitudinal, most developed about the curvatures; a circu¬ 
lar, evenly spread over the whole organ, except around the 
pyloric orifice where it forms a thick ring; and an inner, 
oblique and very incomplete, radiating from the cardiac 
orifice. The submucous coat is made up of lax areolar tissue 
and binds loosely the mucous coat to the muscular. The 
mucous coat is a moist pink membrane which is inelastic, and 
large enough to line the stomach evenly when it is fully dis¬ 
tended. Accordingly, when the organ is empty and shrunken, 
this coat is thrown into folds, which disappear when the organ 
is distended. During digestion the arteries supplying the 
stomach become dilated and, its capillaries being gorged, its 
mucous membrane is then much redder than during hunger. 

The blood-vessels of the stomach run to it between the 
folds of peritoneum which sling it. After giving off a few 
branches to the outer layers, most of the arteries break up 
into small branches in the submucous coat, from which twigs 
proceed to supply the close capillary network of the mucous 
membrane. 

The nerves of the stomach are chiefly derived from the 
pneumogastrics. In the lower part of the thorax these nerves 
consist mainly of nonmedullated fibres, and lie on the sides 
of the gullet, across which they interchange fibres by means 
of several branches. On entering the abdomen the left pneu- 
mogastric passes to the ventral side of the stomach, in which 
it ends: the right supplies the dorsal side of the stomach, but 
a considerable portion of it passes on to enter the solar plexus , 
which lies behind the stomach and contains several large 
ganglia. The sympathetic also supplies gastric nerves which 
mainly go to the blood-vessels. In the muscular coat of the 
stomach are many nerve-cells. 

Histology of tlie Gastric Mucous Membrane. Examina- 


338 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


tion of the inner surface of the stomach with a hand lens 
shows it to be covered with minute shallow pits. Into these 
open the mouths of minute tubes, the gastric glands, which 
are closely packed side by side in the mucous membrane; 
something like the cells of a honeycomb, except that each is 
open at one end. Between them lie a small amount of con¬ 
nective tissue, a close network of lymph-channels, and capil¬ 
lary blood-vessels. The connective tissue is of a peculiar 
variety closely packed with lymph-cells and will be more mi¬ 
nutely described later (Chap. XXIII). The whole surface of 
the mucous membrane is lined by a single layer of columnar 
mucus-making epithelium cells (Fig. 113). These dip down 

and line the necks of the tubular 
glands. The deeper portions of the 
glands are lined by a layer of 
shorter and somewhat cuboidal cells, 
the central or chief cells. In speci¬ 
mens taken from a healthy animal 
killed during digestion these cells are 
large and do not stain deeply with 
carmine. Similar specimens taken 
from an animal an hour or two 
after a good meal has been swallowed 
show the chief cells shrunken and 
staining more deeply. They, thus, 
store up during rest a material which 
they get rid of when the gastric juice 
is being secreted. This material is, 
in part, pepsinogen, which during activity of the gland is 
changed, giving rise among other things to pepsin, the chief^ 
enzyme of gastric juice. The deeply staining protoplasmic 
portion of the cell which is left behind, forms and stores more 
pepsinogen during the next period during which the stomach 
is not digesting. In the pyloric end of the stomach only the 
chief cells line the glands, but elsewhere there is found out¬ 
side them, in most of the glands, an incomplete layer of larger 
oval cells ( d, Fig. 113). These are sometimes called the 
oxyntic cells, from the belief that they are especially con¬ 
cerned in secreting the acid of the gastric juice. The glands 
frequently branch at their deeper ends. 

The Pylorus. If the stomach be opened it is seen that 
the mucous membrane projects in a fold around the pyloric 



Fio. 113. — A thin section 
through the gastric mucous 
membrane, perpendicular to its 
surface, magnified about % di¬ 
ameters. a, a simple gastric 
gland ; 6, a compound gastric 
gland ; c , a gland containing 
only chief cells ; d , oval or so- 
calied oxyntic cells ; o, retiform 
connective tissue. 






THE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 339 


■orifice and narrows it. This is due to a thick ring of the 
circular muscular layer there developed, and forming around 
the orifice a sphincter muscle , which, by its contraction, keeps 
the passage to the small intestine closed except when portions 
of food are to be passed on from the stomach to succeeding 
divisions of the alimentary canal. 

Since the cardiac end of the stomach lies immediately be¬ 
neath the diaphragm, which has the heart on its upper side, 
its over-distension, due to indigestion or flatulence, may im¬ 
pede the action of the thoracic organs, and cause feelings of 
oppression in the chest, or palpitation of the heart. 

The Small Intestine (Fig. 120), commencing at the py¬ 
lorus, ends, after many windings, in the large. It is about six 
meters (twenty feet) long, and about five centimeters (two 
inches) wide at its gastric end, narrowing to about two thirds 
of that width at its lower portion. Externally there are no 
lines of subdivision on the small intestine, but anatomists 
arbitrarily describe it as consisting of three parts; the first 
twelve inches being the duodenum, D, the succeeding two 
fifths of the remainder the jejunum, J, and the rest the 
ileum, I. 

Like the stomach, the small intestine possesses four coats; 
a serous, a muscular, a submucous, and a mucous. The 
serous coat is formed by a duplicature of the peritoneum, but 
presents nothing answering to the great omentum; this 
double fold, slinging the intestine as the small omentum 
slings the stomach, is named the mesentery. The muscular 
coat is composed of plain muscular tissue arranged in two 
strata, an outer longitudinal, and an inner transverse or cir¬ 
cular. The submucous coat is like that of the stomach; con¬ 
sisting of loose areolar tissue, binding together the mucous 
and muscular coats, and forming a bed in which the blood 
and lymphatic vessels (which reach the intestine in the fold 
of the mesentery) break up into minute branches before en¬ 
tering the mucous membrane. 

The Mucous Coat ofthe Small Intestine. This is pink, 
soft and extremely vascular. It does not present temporary 
or effaceable folds like those of the stomach, but is, through¬ 
out a great portion of its length, raised up into permanent 
transverse folds in the form of crescentic ridges, each of 
which runs transversely for a greater or less way round the 
tube (Fig. 114). These folds are the valvulce conniventes. 


340 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


They are first found about two inches from the pylorus, and 
are most thickly set and largest in the upper half of the 
jejunum, in the lower half of which they become gradually 
less conspicuous; and they finally disappear altogether ^bout 
the middle of the ileum. The folds serve greatly to increase 
the surface of the mucous membrane both for absorption and 
secretion, and they also delay the food somewhat in its pas¬ 
sage, since it must collect in the hollows between them, and 
so be longer exposed to the action of the digestive liquids. 
Examined closely with the eye or, better, with aid of a lens, 
the mucous membrane of the small intestine is seen to be not 
smooth but shaggy, being covered everywhere (both over the 
valvulae conniventes and between them) with closely packed 
minute processes, standing up somewhat like the “pile” on 
velvet, and known as the villi. Each villus is from 0.5 to 0.7 
millimeter (fa to fa inch) in length; some are conical and 
rounded, hut the majority are compressed at the base in one 
diameter (Fig. 115). In structure a villus is somewhat com¬ 
plex. Covering it is a single layer of columnar epithelial cells, 
the exposed ends of the majority having a peculiar bright 
striated border and being probably of great importance in ab¬ 
sorption. Mixed with these cells are others in which most of 
the cell has become filled with a clear mass which does not 
stain readily with reagents; the deep narrow end of the cell 
stains easily and contains the nucleus. From time to time the 
clear substance (mucigen) is converted into mucus and dis¬ 
charged into the intestine, leaving behind only the nucleus and 
the protoplasm around it. These reconstruct the cell and form 
more mucigen. These mucus-forming cells are named goblet- 
cells, from their shape. Beneath the epithelium the villus may 



Fig. 1'14.—A portion of the small intestine opened to show the valvulae conniventes. 

be regarded as made up of a framework of connective tissue, 
mainly of the adenoid variety (Chap. XXIII), supporting the 









TEE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 341 


more essential constituents. Near the surface is an incomplete 
layer of plain muscular tissue, continuous below with a mus¬ 
cular stratum forming the deepest layer of the mucous mem¬ 
brane and named the muscular is mucosae . In the centre is an 
offshoot of the lymphatic system; sometimes in the form of a 
single vessel with a closed dilated end, and sometimes as a net¬ 
work formed by two main vessels with cross-branches. During 
digestion these lymphatics are filled with a milky-white liquid 
absorbed from the intestines, and they are accordingly called 
the lacteals. They communicate with larger branches in the 
submucous coat, which end in trunks that pass out through 
the mesentery to join the main lymphatic system. Finally, 
in each villus, outside the lacteals and beneath the muscular 
layer of the villus, is a close network of blood-vessels. 

Opening on the surface of the small intestine, between 
the bases of the villi, are small glands, the crypts of Lieler- 
icuhn. Each is a simple unbranched tube lined by a layer of 
columnar cells some of which have a striated free border, 
though less marked than that on the corresponding cells of 



Fig 115.—Villi of the small intestine: magnified about, 80 diameters. In the 
right-hand figure the lacteals, a . b, c. are filled wiiu white injection; d, blood-ves¬ 
sels In the left-hand figure the lacteals alone are represented, filled with a dark 
injection. The epithelium covering the villi, and their muscular fibres, are omitted. 


the villi, and others are goblet-cells. The crypts of Lieber- 
kiihn are closely packed, side by side, like the glands of the 
stomach. In the duodenum are found other minute glands, 
the glands of Brunner. They lie in the submucous coat 



342 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


and send their ducts through the mucous membrane to open 
on its inner side. 

The Large Intestine (Fig. 120), forming the final por¬ 
tion of the alimentary canal, is about 1.5 meters (5 feet) 
long, and varies in diameter from about 6 to 4 centimeters 
(2| to H inches). Anatomists describe it as consisting of 
the ccecum with the vermiform appendix, the colon, and the 
rectum. The small intestine does not open into the com¬ 
mencement of the large but into its side, some distance from 
its closed upper end, and the caecum, CC, is that part of the 
large intestine which extends beyond the communication. 
From it projects the vermiform appendix, a narrow tube 
not thicker than a cedar pencil, and about 10 centimeters 
(4 inches) long. The colon commences on the right side of 
the abdominal cavity where the small intestine communicates 
with the large, runs up for some way on that side ( ascending 
colon, AC), then crosses the middle line ( transverse colon, 
TC) below the stomach, and turns down (descending colon, 
DC) on the left side and there makes an S-shaped bend 
known as the sigmoid flexure, SF; from this the rectum, R, 
the terminal straight portion of the intestine, proceeds to 
the anal opening, by which the alimentary canal communi¬ 
cates with the exterior. In structure the large intestine 
presents the same coats as the small. The external stratum 
of the muscular coat is not, however, developed uniformly 
around it, except on the rectum, but occurs in three bands 
separated by intervals in which it is wanting. These bands 
being shorter than the rest of the tube cause it to be puck¬ 
ered, or sacculated, between them. The mucous coat pos¬ 
sesses no villi or valvulae conniventes, but is usually thrown 
into effaceable folds, like those of the stomach but smaller. 
It contains numerous closely set glands much like the crypts 
of Lieberkuhn of the small intestine. 

The Ileo-colic Valve. Where the small intestine joins 
the large there is a valve, formed by two flaps of the mucous 
membrane sloping down into the colon, and so disposed as to 
allow matters to pass readily from the ileum into the large 
intestine but not the other way. 

The Nerves of the Intestines. These, like those of the 
heart with which we shall later have to compare them 
physiologically, are intrinsic and extrinsic. The former are 
connected with small ganglia found abundantly on the 


THE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 343 


plexus of Auerbach which lies between the two muscular 
coats, and the plexus of Meissner found in the submucous 
coat. The extrinsic fibres proceed immediately from the 
gangliated solar plexus already referred to and from a similar 
mesenteric plexus which lies lower in the abdomen; except a 
few branches to the longitudinal muscular coat of the rectum 
which pass directly from some of the sacral spinal nerves. 
Some of the fibres distributed from the solar plexus are 
those running from the brain in the right pneumogastric, 
and probably also from the left, having crossed over to the 
left in branches joining the two. Others reach the solar 
plexus by means of the splanchnics and other nerves pro¬ 
ceeding from the thoracic parts of the two sympathetic chains. 
These are partly vaso-constrictor fibres (Chap. XVIII.), but 
in part go to the muscular coats of the intestine. They may 
be traced back through the communicating branches from 
sympathetic ganglia to the corresponding spinal nerves and 
thence by the ventral nerve-roots into the spinal cord. 
The fibres passing to the intestines from the mesenteric 
plexus reach that plexus from the posterior thoracic and 
anterior lumbar sympathetic ganglia, and can also be tracked 
by experiment to the spinal cord. 

The Liver. Besides the secretions formed by the glands 
imbedded in its walls, the small intestine receives those of 
two large glands, the liver and the pancreas , which lie in the 
abdominal cavity. The ducts of both open by a common 
aperture into the duodenum about 10 centimeters (4 inches) 
from the pylorus. 

The liver is the largest gland in the Body, weighing from 
1400 to 1700 grams (50 to 64 ounces). It is situated in the 
upper part of the abdominal cavity ( le , le' , Fig. 1), rather 
more on the right than on the left side and immediately 
below the diaphragm, into the concavity of which its upper 
surface fits, and reaches across the middle line above the 
pyloric end of the stomach. It is of dark reddish-brown 
color, and of a soft friable texture. A deep fissure incom¬ 
pletely divides the organ into rigid and left lobes , of which 
the right is much the larger; on its under surface (Fig. 116) 
shallower grooves mark off several minor lobes. Its upper 
surface is smooth and convex. The vessels carrying blood 
to the liver are the portal vein , Vp, and the hepatic artery; 
both enter it at a fissure ( the portal fissure ) on its under side. 


344 


TEE HUMAN BODY. 


and there also a duct passes out from each half of the organ. 
The ducts unite to form the hepatic duct, Dh, which meets 
at an acute angle, the cystic duct, Dc, proceeding from the 
gall-bladder, Vf, a pear-shaped sac in which the bile, or gall, 
formed by the liver, accumulates when food is not being 
digested in the intestine. The common bile-duct, Dch, 



formed by the union of the hepatic and cystic ducts, opens 
into the duodenum. The blood which enters the liver by 
the portal vein and hepatic artery passes out by the hepatic 
veins, Vh, which leave the posterior border of the organ close 
to the vertebral column, and there open into the inferior vena 
cava just before it passes up through the diaphragm. 

The Structure of the Liver. On closely examining the 
surface of the liver, it will be seen to be marked out into 
small, angular areas from one to two millimeters to ^ 
inch) in diameter. These are the outer sides of the super¬ 
ficial layer of a vast number of minute polygonal masses, or 
lobules, of which the liver is built up; similar areas are seen 
on the surface of any section made through the organ. 
Each lobule (Fig. 117) consists of a number of hepatic 
cells supported by a close network of capillaries; and is 
separated from neighboring lobules by connective tissue, 








TEE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 345 


larger blood-vessels, and branches of the hepatic duct. The 
hepatic cells are the proper tissue elements of the liver, all 
the rest being subsidiary arrangements for their nutrition 
and protection. Each is polygonal, nucleated and very 
granular, and has a diameter of about .025 millimeter ( T oVo 
of an inch). In each lobule they are arranged in rows or 
strings, which form a network, in the meshes of which the 
blood-capillaries run. Covering the surface of the liver 
is a layer of the peritoneum, beneath which is a dense 



Fig. 117.—A lobule of the liver, magnified, showing the hepatic cells radiately 
arranged around the central intralobular vein, and the lobular capillaries inter¬ 
laced with them. 


connective-tissue layer, forming the capsule of Glisson. At 
the portal fissure offsets from this capsule run in, and line 
canals, the portal canals , which are tunnelled through the 
organ. These, becoming smaller and smaller as they branch, 
finally become indistinguishable close to the ultimate 
lobules. From their walls and from the external capsule, 
connective-tissue partitions radiate in all directions through 
the liver and support its other parts. In each portal canal 
lie three vessels—a branch of the portal vein, a branch of 
the hepatic artery, and a branch of the hepatic duct; the 
division of the portal vein being much the largest of the 
three. These vessels break up as the portal canals do, and 
all end in minute branches around the lobules. The blood 
carried in by the portal vein (which has already circulated 
through the capillaries of the stomach, spleen, intestines and 


346 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


pancreas) is thus conveyed to a fine vascular interlobular 
plexus around the liver-lobules, from which it flows on 
through the capillaries (lobular plexus) of the lobules them¬ 
selves. These (Fig. 117) unite in the centre of the lobule to 
form a small intralobular vein , which carries the blood out 
and pours it into one of the branches of origin of the hepatic 
vein, called the sublobular vein. Each of the latter has 
many lobules emptying blood into it, and if dissected out 
with them (Fig. 118) would look something like a branch of 
a tree with apples attached to it by short stalks, represented 



Fig. 118.—A small portion of the liver, injected, and magnified about twenty 
diameters. The blood vessels are represented white; the large vessel is a sub¬ 
lobular vein, receiving the intralobular veins, which in turn are derived from the 
capillaries of the lobules. 

by the intralobular veins. The blood is finally carried, as 
already pointed out, by the hepatic veins into the inferior vena 
cava. The hepatic artery, a direct offshoot of the coeliac 
axis, ends mainly in Glisson’s capsule and the walls of the 
blood-vessels and bile-ducts, but some of its blood reaches 
the lobular plexuses; it all finally leaves the liver by the 
hepatic veins. 

The bile-ducts can be readily traced to the periphery 
of the lobules, and there communicate with a network of 
extremely minute commencing bile ducts, ramifying in the 
lobule between the hepatic cells composing it. 

The Pancreas or Sweetbread. This is an elongated 
soft organ of a pinkish yellow color, lying along the great 
curvature of the stomach. Its right end is the larger, 
and is embraced by the duodenum (Fig. 119), which there 



THE ALIMENTARY CANAL AND ITS APPENDAGES. 347 


makes a curve to the left. A duct traverses the gland and 
joins the common bile-duct close to its intestinal opening. 
The pancreas produces a watery-looking secretion which is of 
great importance in digestion; the gland also (Chap. XXIII) 
exerts an important influence on the general nutritional 
processes of the Bod} r . It is of the compound racemose type. 



Fig. 
of the 
turned 
spleen 
duct: c. 


_The stomach, pancreas. liver, and duodenum, with part of the rest 

small intestine and the mesentery; the stomach and liver have been 
up so as to expose the pancreas. V. stomach : D, D'. D". duodenum ; L, 
P pancreas ; R. rif?ht kidnev : T. jejunum ; Vf, {jail-bladder: h, hepatic 
cystic duct ; ch. common bile-duct; 1. aorta; 2. an artery (left coronary! 


of the stomach; 3. hepatic artery: 4. splenic artery: 5. superior mesenteric artery; 
6, superior mesenteric vein; 7, splenic vein; Fp, portal vein 


The Blood-vessels of Alimentary Canal, Liver, Spleen 
and Pancreas. The portal vein ( Vp, Fig. 119) has already 


















348 


THE HUMAN BOD Y. 



been referred to as differing from all other veins in that it 
not only receives blood from a system of capillaries but ends 
in a second set of capillaries, which lie in the liver. The 
quantity of blood brought to supply the hepatic capillaries 
by the hepatic artery is in fact much less than that brought 
by the portal vein. The stomach, the intestines, the pancreas 

and the spleen are supplied 
with arterial blood from 
three great branches of the 
aorta. The most anterior 
of these, the cceliac axis , 
springs from the aorta close 
beneath the diaphragm and 
divides into the hepatic 
artery , splenic artery , and 
arteries for the stomach; 
some of these divisions may 
be seen in Fig. 119. The 
pancreas is supplied partly 
from the hepatic, partly 
from the splenic artery. 
The two other branches 
(superior and inferior mes¬ 
enteric artery) are given off 
from the aorta lower down 
in the abdominal cavity; 
the former (5, Fig. 119) 
supplies the small intestine 
and half of the large, the 

Fig. 1 20 .— Diagram of abdominal part of latter the remainder of the 
alimentary canal. C , the cardiac, and P, 

the pyloric end of the stomach; D, the large. lhe blood passing 
duodenum; J, I, the convolutions of the .. , .. , . 

small intestine; CC , the caecum with the through all these arteries 
vermiform appendix; AC , ascending;, TC , ■, • , 

transverse, and DC, descending colon; R. becomes VeilOUS m tUe 
the rectum. -n • £ 

capillaries ot the organs 
they supply, and is gathered into corresponding veins (Fig. 
119) which unite near the liver to form the portal vein. 
The further course of the blood carried to the liver (partly 
arterial from the hepatic artery, partly venous from the portal 
system) has been described already (p. 345). 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM AND THE DUCTLESS GLANDS. 

The Lymphatics or Absorbents are very widely distrib¬ 
uted in the Body. Most organs, as has been pointed 
out (p. 63), possess a sort of internal skeleton made up 
of connective tissue, which consists mainly of bundles of 
fibres, united together and covered-in by a “cement” sub¬ 
stance. In this substance are found numerous cavities, usu¬ 
ally branched, and communicating with one another by their 
branches. They frequently contain connective-tissue cor¬ 
puscles, which, however, do not completely fill them; and 
they thus, with their branches, form a set of intercommuni¬ 
cating channels known as the “lymph-canaliculi” because 
they are filled with lymph. As the connective tissues accom¬ 
pany blood-vessels wherever the latter run, the canaliculi, 
which are frequently relatively large around the blood-capil¬ 
laries, take up the liquid which transudes through their walls, 
.and this transudation liquid is the origin of the lymph. 
Even where blood-vessels and connective tissue do not pene¬ 
trate, as in bone between the Haversian canals, lymph-canal¬ 
iculi penetrate, being connected with the cavities in which 
the bone-corpuscles lie; and in the deeper layers of the 
epidermis the cells are covered with prickle-like projections 
and unite by the tips of these so as to leave minute channels 
which apparently are lymph-canaliculi. These very minute 
channels, with no definite lining cells, but mere crevices be¬ 
tween tissue elements, or tubes hollowed out in the matrix of 
connective tissue, bone and (possibly) cartilage, constitute 
the origin of the lymphatic system. The transudation liquid 
which enters them from the blood-vessels is rapidly altered 
by interchange with the neighboring tissues, losing certain 
materials and gathering others; and as the substances taken 
aud the waste and other products returned vary very much 
in different organs, the lymph leaving them must differ also. 
Nevertheless it retains certain common features, histological 

349 


350 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


and chemical (pp. 49, 62), which justify us in speaking of it 
in general as the lymph. The lymphatic vessels collect this 
lymph or at least such part of it as does not pass back locally 
by diffusion into the blood, and pour it into the veins. 

The Structure of Lymph-vessels. The smallest lymph - 
vessels proper are the lymph-capillaries; tubes rather wider 
than the blood-capillaries, but like them having a wall con¬ 
sisting of a single layer of flattened epithelium cells. The 
cells have, however, a wavy margin and are not as a rule much 
longer in one diameter than another, in both of which respects 
they differ from the cells of the corresponding blood-vessels. 
In some regions, as in many glands, the lymph-capillaries are 
much dilated and form irregular lymph lacunae, everywhere 
bounded by their peculiar wavy cells, lying in the interstices 
of organs; and sometimes they form tubes around small blood¬ 
vessels, as in the brain ( perivascular lymph-channel). In 
some places they commence by blind ends as in the lacteal 
vessels of the villi of the small intestine (Fig. 115) which are 
lymph-capillaries; but usually they branch and join to form 
networks. Lymph from the canaliculi enters them (whether 
by passing through their boundary cells of through clefts left 
between these is not certain) and is passed on to larger vessels 
which much resemble veins of corresponding size, having the 
same three coats, and being abundantly provided with valves. 

The Thoracic Duct. The lymph-vessels proceeding from 
the capillaries in various organs become larger and fewer by 
joining together, and all end finally in two main trunks which 
open into the venous system on the sides of the neck, at the 
point of junction of the jugular and subclavian veins. The 
trunk on the right side is much smaller than the other and 
is known as the “ right lymphatic duct.” It collects lymph 
from the right side of the thorax, from the right side of the head 
and neck, and the right arm. The lymph from all the rest 
of the Body is collected into the thoracic duct. It com¬ 
mences at the upper part of the abdominal cavity in a dilated 
reservoir (the receptaculum cliyli), into which the lacteals 
from the intestines, and the lymphatics of the rest of the 
lower part of the Body, open. From thence the thoracie 
duct, receiving tributaries on its course, runs up the thorax 
alongside of the aorta and, passing on into the neck, ends on the 
left side at the point already indicated; receiving on its way 
the main stems from the left arm and the left side of the 


LYMPHATIC SYSTEM AND DUCT/LESS GLANDS. 351 


head and neck. The thoracic duct, thus, brings back to the 
blood much more lymph than the right lymphatic duct. 

The Serous Cavities. These are great dependencies of 
the lymphatic system and may be regarded as large lacunae. 
Each of them (peritoneal, pleural, arachnoidal and pericar¬ 
diac) is lined by a definite epithelioid layer of close-fitting 
polygonal cells. At certain points, however, openings or 
stomata occur, surrounded by a ring of smaller cells, and 
leading into tubes which open into subjacent lymphatic 
vessels. The liquid moistening these cavities is, then, really 
lymph: in some dropsical diseases it collects in great excess 
in them. 

Lymphoid or Adenoid Tissue is the name given to cer¬ 
tain aggregations of slightly differentiated cells ( leucocytes ) 
supported by a peculiar form of tissue and found in con¬ 
nection with the lymphatic system in many parts of the body. 
The cells much resemble white blood-corpuscles, though their 
nuclei usually have a more distinct network, and they are 
capable of executing amoeboid movements. Many of them 
ultimately are carried by the lymph into the blood to be¬ 
come pale corpuscles, and from the blood some again pass 
back into the lymph by migrating through the walls of 
the blood-capillaries. By amoeboid movement these lymph- 
corpuscles can take up foreign particles into themselves 
and creep with the absorbed material along lymph-canaliculi 
and lymph-capillaries. Lymphoid tissue is extensively devel¬ 
oped in the mucous membrane of a great part of the ali¬ 
mentary canal. 

The deepest layer of the mucous membrane of stomach 
and intestines, lying next to the submucous coat is the mus- 
cularis mucosce , a thin layer of unstriped muscular tissue quite 
distinct from the proper muscular coats of those viscera. Above 
it and forming the main bulk of the mucous membrane lying 
between the glands ( 0 , Fig. 112) and, in the small intestine, 
the main mass of the villi, is a delicate connective tissue con¬ 
sisting of very fine fibres which originated by the branch¬ 
ing of cells; in many places the nuclei of these cells have quite 
disappeared, and the original central part of the cell is only 
recognizable as the place from which the branches spread: such 
tissue is reticular connective tissue. Its meshes contain many 
leucocytes, and the mixture of reticular tissue with these cells 
constitutes adenoid or lymphoid tissue. At numerous spots. 


352 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


especially in the small intestine, the cells are peculiarly abun¬ 
dant, forming local aggregations of about the size of the head 
of a small pin: these are named closed or solitary follicles. 
A minute artery enters each and gives rise to a capillary net¬ 
work in it, from which the blood is carried off by a small vein. 
The follicle lies in, or rather projects into, a lymph-lacunae 
which closely invests it, and is in direct communication with 
other lymphatic vessels of the neighborhood. The central 
leucocytes of the follicle are smaller than the outer, and their 
nuclei are often found in various stages of karyokinesis. 
Each follicle must therefore be regarded as a seat of forma¬ 
tion of new leucocytes, new-made ones being pushed to the 
outside, growing, and finally being cast out into the sur¬ 
rounding lymph-lacuna, to be carried away in the lymph- 
current. 

Near the lower part of the ileum large numbers of solitary 
follicles are closely collected side by side at intervals along 
the part of the bowel opposite to that at which the mesentery 
joins it: these aggregations are known as Peyer’spatches; and 
are easily recognizable by the unaided eye* as villi are absent, 
from the part of the mucous membrane opposite them, and 
they also cause a bulging, visible on the outside of the intes¬ 
tine. They disappear after middle life. 

The Lymphatic Glands are essentially Peyer’s patches 
more complicated in structure by the fact that the constitu¬ 
ent follicles are more closely united and are gathered into 
roundish masses instead of being spread out in a single layer. 
They are found in various regions on the course of lymphatic 
vessels; especially in the mesentery, groin and neck. In the 
latter position they often inflame and give rise to abscesses, 
especially in tuberculous persons; and still more often enlarge, 
harden and become more or less tender, so as to attract at¬ 
tention to them. In common parlance it. is then frequently 
said that the person’s “kernels have come down,” or that he 
has “ waxing kernels.” Each lymphatic gland is enveloped 
in a connective-tissue capsule, partitions of which incomplete¬ 
ly divide it into chambers in which the lymphoid tissue lies. 
The partitions are more complete in the outer parts of the 
gland (cortical portion), which accordingly looks different 
from the central portion (medulla) in sections. In the lym¬ 
phoid tissue are contained many leucocytes in process of 
division. “ Afferent ” lymphatic vessels open into the pe- 


lymphatic system and ductless glands. 353 

riphery of the gland, and efferent vessels arise in its centre. 
Hence the lymph in its flow traverses the cellular gland sub¬ 
stance, and in its course picks up extra corpuscles which it 
carries on to the blood. In the lymphoid tissue there is a 
close network of blood-capillaries. It is clear that these 
organs are not true glands, in the proper sense of the word: 
they are sometimes called lymphatic ganglia , but that sug¬ 
gests a connection with nerve-centres; a good name for them 
is lymphatic nodes. In Fig. 120 is given a diagrammatic rep¬ 
resentation of a lymphatic node. 



el 


Fig. 121.—Diagram of cross-section of a lymphatic gland: al, afferent lymphatic 
vessels; el, efferent lymphatic vessel; tr. one of the connective-tissue bands sub¬ 
dividing the gland ; C. cortical portion: M. medullary portion. The leucocytes are 
represented only in a part of the right half of the figure , where they are seen, Ih. 
to lie closely packed in the centre of a gland-chamber, while towards the walls of 
the chamber, Is, where they are naturally less closely packed, they have been 
washed away, as often happens in preparing a specimen, leaving the reticular sup¬ 
porting tissue conspicuous. 


The Movement of the Lymph. This is no doubt some¬ 
what irregular in the commencing vessels, but, on the whole, 
sets on to the larger trunks and through them to the veins. 
In many animals (as the frog) at points where the lymphatics 
communicate with the veins, there are found regularly con¬ 
tractile “lymph-hearts” which beat with a rhythm independ¬ 
ent of that of the blood-heart, and pump the lymph into a 
vein. In the human Body, however, there are no such hearts, 
and the flow of the lymph is dependent on less definite 
arrangements. It seems to be maintained mainly by three 
things. (I) The pressure on the blood-plasma in the capil¬ 
laries is greater than that in the great veins of the neck: 
hence any plasma filtered through the capillary-walls will be 





354 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


under a pressure which will tend to make it flow to the ve¬ 
nous termination of the thoracic or the right lymphatic duct. 
(2) On account of the numerous valves in the lymphatic 
vessels (which all only allow the lymph to flow past them to 
larger trunks) any movement compressing a lymph-vessel will 
cause an onward flow of its contents. The influence thus 
exerted is very important. If a tube be put in a large lym¬ 
phatic, say at the top of the leg of an animal, it will be seen 
that the lymph only flows out very slowly while the animal 
is quiet; but as soon as it moves the leg the flow is greatly 
accelerated. (3) During each inspiration the pressure on the 
thoracic duct is less than that in the lymphatics in parts of 
the Body outside the thorax (see Chap. XXV). Accord¬ 
ingly, at that time, ljmph is pressed, or, in common phrase, 
is “ sucked,” into the thoracic duct. During the succeeding 
expiration the pressure on the thoracic duct becomes greater 
again, and some of its contents are pressed out; but on 
account of the valves of the vessels which unite to form the 
duct, they can only go towards the veins of the neck. 

During digestion, moreover, contractions of the villi press 
on the lymph or chyle within them and force it on; and in 
certain parts of the Body gravity, of course, aids the flow, 
though it will impede it in others. 

The Ductless Glands—Spleen, Thyroid, Thymus, Pit¬ 
uitary Body, Suprarenals.— There are in the Body several 
organs of such considerable size and so constantly present 
in vertebrate animals that a priori they would seem to be of 
functional importance. Until quite recently, however, the 
functions of nearly all of them were quite problematical, al¬ 
though it has long been known that pathological changes in 
some of them were associated with grave conditions of general 
disease. Even yet their physiology is very incompletely known. 

When we speak of a true gland we mean an organ that 
forms some definite secretion which it pours out in a separate 
form, hut the organs we are about to consider have no secret¬ 
ing recesses and no ducts: nevertheless some of them un¬ 
doubtedly make, and pass into the lymph and blood, substances 
of great importance to the healthy working of the Body. 
Some true glands indeed do this, quite apart from the manu¬ 
facture of what is usually spoken of as their secretion. Why 
so large an organ as the liver should be set apart for the for¬ 
mation of so comparatively unimportant a digestive fluid as 


LYMPHATIC SYSTEM AND DUCTLESS GLANDS. 355 


the bile was long a puzzle. We now know that the chief use 
of the liver is connected with the storage and formation of car¬ 
bohydrate materials (see Chap. XXIX), and that, quite apart 
from the use of bile in digestion or the elimination of part of 
the bile as waste, the liver exerts an essential influence on the 
whole normal nutritional processes of the Body. Again, in 
the pancreas we have an organ which forms a very important 
digestive secretion, and it might well be that this was its sole 
use in the economy. But when the pancreas is carefully re¬ 
moved from an animal great nutritional disturbances follow, 
as shown, among other things, by diabetes , i.e., the presence 
of sugar in the urine. Since the pancreatic secretion poured 
into the intestine by the gland duct has much to do with the 
digestion of starch and its conversion into sugar, it might be 
supposed that mere digestive disturbances due to its absence 
led to the diabetic and general changes. But this is not so. 
If a piece of living pancreas be transplanted from one animal 
to beneath the skin of another, and left until it has grown 
there, the pancreas of the second animal may be removed 
without causing diabetes. Moreover it is possible by inject¬ 
ing melted paraffin into the pancreatic duct of an animal not 
only to prevent the gland secretion from reaching the intes¬ 
tine, but to cause atrophy of the true gland-cells. Yet 
animals so treated do not become diabetic. It is then clear 
that there is some material necessary to health and quite 
distinct from pancreatic juice formed by pancreatic tissue and 
taken up from it by the circulating liquids. Scattered through 
the pancreas, and quite distinct from its proper gland tissue, 
are peculiar patches of cells very richly supplied with blood¬ 
vessels. Probably these cells are concerned in the antidiabetic 
function of the gland; but whether through special cells 
or not, the organ has an important internal secretion to 
blood and lymph, in addition to its external secretion to its 
duct. This fact may have a very wide bearing: it may be 
that all organs, or many organs, in addition to their more ob¬ 
vious functions, do, as the result of the chemical processes 
taking place in them, manufacture substances a supply of 
which, to lymph or blood, is required for the life or health of 
distant parts of the Body. The waste of one organ before its 
final conversion into carbon dioxide, water, or urea, for elimi¬ 
nation from the system, may be a necessary food of another. 
It is, for example, quite possible that the kreatin formed in 


356 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


muscles and passed from them to the circulating fluid is 
essential to the general health of the Body. There are, how¬ 
ever, so many muscles that the removal of some of them, as 
when a limb is amputated, does not cut otf the kreatin supply,, 
and so disease does not result. hen, on the other hand, an 
organ is unique, as the thyroid, or exists only in a single pair, 
as the suprarenals, then removal or extensive disease, by de¬ 
priving the system of the peculiar internal secretion of the 
organ concerned or, possibly, from the accumulation within 
the blood of substances which it is the function of the missing 
part to absorb and destroy, may, often in fact does, lead to 
widespread nutritional changes, resulting in death. 

The Spleen. This is an organ situated at the left end of 
the stomach ( L , Fig. 110) and is about 170 grams (6 oz.) in 
weight. Its size is, however, very variable; it enlarges dur¬ 
ing digestion and shrinks after it until the next meal. In 
many fevers, especially in those of malarial nature, it also 
becomes enlarged, frequently to a very great extent, and this 
enlargement may become permanent, constituting the so- 
called “ ague-cake.” In color the spleen is dark red, but if 
cut across numerous white spots of about 1 mm. (-fc inch) 
diameter are seen scattered over the surface of the section: it 
is very richly supplied with blood which is carried away by 
the splenic vein (7, Fig. 119) and poured into the portal vein. 
The spleen possesses on its exterior a connective-tissue capsule 
very rich in elastic fibres and giving off numerous bands 
( trabeculae ) which branch and interlace throughout the organ 
forming a spongy mass, in tlie spaces of which is contained a 
soft red pulp of peculiar structure. The arteries of the organ 
by frequent branching are reduced to almost capillary size, 
and these terminal twigs enter into the pulp, and there, los¬ 
ing all coats but the lining epithelium, assume the structure 
of capillaries. The cells forming the walls of these ca¬ 
pillaries next separate from one another so as to leave 
clefts between them, and at the same time become irregu¬ 
larly branched and, joining by their branches, form a sup¬ 
porting framework or reticulum through the pulp, into 
which latter the blood is poured freely through the spaces 
between the cells. The main mass of the splenic pulp con¬ 
sists of red blood-corpuscles, some normal in appearance, 
some appearing partly broken down; mixed with these are 
some white corpuscles, and some larger colorless amoeboid 


LYMPHATIC SYSTEM AND DUCTLESS GLANDS. 337 


cells in which are often found one or more red corpuscles 
which have apparently been swallowed by them. There are 
also many pigmented granules, some free and some within 
amoeboid cells; they are apparently the debris of red corpus¬ 
cles which have been broken down. In early life the splenic 
pulp also contains granular colorless cells within which red 
corpuscles are seen in the process of development. The whole 
histological structure of the adult pulp suggests that in it 
many red blood-corpuscles are finally destroyed, setting free 
haemoglobin and other coloring matters derived from it. This 
breaking down of haemoglobin must also give rise to proteids 
and substances derived from the chemical degradation of 
proteids, and the spleen is extremely rich in nitrogenous 
crystalline substances. The increase in size of the spleen 
during digestion, when the veins of the alimentary canal are 
pouring great quantities of blood laden with absorbed mat¬ 
ters into the portal system, suggests that the spleen supplies^ 
things to the liver at that time which are of importance to it. 
There is reason to believe that the main coloring matter 
of the bile ( bilirubin ) is derived from the haemoglobin of red 
corpuscles which have completed their life-period and been 
destroyed, and it may be that the spleen takes the first steps in 
the preparation of bilirubin for its elimination from the Body 
as a waste product. There still is, however, much doubt as 
to the real function of the spleen; it almost certainly plays 
an important part in tbe proteid metabolisms of the Body. 
Though so large an organ it is not essential; animals from 
whom it has been completely removed can live a long time 
in good health. The red marrow of spongy bone greatly re¬ 
sembles the splenic pulp in histological characters and may 
have similar functions and be able to entirely take the place of 
the spleen when the organ has been excised. The white spots 
seen on the cut surface of a spleen are sections of masses of 
adenoid tissue attached to the smaller splenic arteries and 
named Malpighian corpuscles; they resemble the elosed fol¬ 
licles of the intestine in structure. 

The Thyroid Body or G-land. This organ lies in the 
neck on the sides of the windpipe and consists usually of a 
right and a left lobe united by a narrow isthmus across the 
front of the air-tube. It is about thirty grams (two ounces) 
in weight; in the disease known as goitre it is greatly en¬ 
larged and its structure altered. The thyroid is dark red in 


358 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


color and very vascular, richly supplied with nerves, and is 
subdivided by connective tissue into cavities or alveoli , the 
largest of which are just visible to the unaided eye. Each 
alveolus is lined by a single layer of cuboidal cells, and filled 
by a glairy fluid which appears to contain mucin. 

The very abundant blood-supply of the thyroid suggests 
that it is the seat of important metabolic or chemical changes, 
and observation and experiment confirm this. Extensive 
disease of the thyroid leads to great changes in the general 
nutrition of the Body, ending in the condition named 
myxodcema; muciginous liquid collects in the connective tis¬ 
sues, nervous and muscular activity are much impaired, 
tremors and convulsions occur, and finally a semi idiotic con¬ 
dition (cretinism) comes on and is followed by death if all the 
gland be diseased. Quite similar symptoms follow the com¬ 
plete removal of the thyroid body from animals, or from man 
for tumors; but if even a small part of healthy gland-tissue 
be left behind the symptoms do not occur. Moreover, if a 
portion of living thyroid from one animal be grafted beneath 
the skin of another, the thyroid of the latter can be com¬ 
pletely removed without influencing the general health. It 
would seem then that the gland is the place of formation of 
some substance essential to the healthy working of the Body, 
but that under ordinary conditions of life the whole organ 
is not required to produce the necessary minimum of this 
substance. This view is strengthened by the fact that in 
patients with thyroid disease and in animals deprived of the 
organ the symptoms of myxodoema may be relieved or removed 
by adding raw thyroid tissue to the food, or by subcutaneous 
injection of the expressed juice of a fresh gland. When in¬ 
jected into a healthy animal extract of thyroid causes arterial 
dilatation, and a lowering of blood pressure. 

The Thymus. This is a temporary organ of unknown 
function. Jt has its greatest size in proportion to the whole 
weight of the Body a short time before birth. After birth 
it grows in absolute weight for some time, but then begins 
to dwindle away and has usually completely disappeared by 
the twelfth or fourteenth year. It lies in front of the wind¬ 
pipe in the lower part of the neck and the upper part of the 
thorax, and is the “neck ” sweetbread of the butcher as dis¬ 
tinguished from the true sweetbread or pancreas. The 


LYMPHATIC SYSTEM AND DUCTLESS GLANDS. 359 

thymus essentially consists of adenoid tissue, and is well sup¬ 
plied with blood-vessels and lymphatics. 

The Pituitary Body (Fig. 75) is in part an offshoot of the 
brain, and probably that portion of it is, like the pineal body, 
a remnant of a once functionally important ancestral organ. 
The anterior lobe of the pituitary body, however, is derived 
in development from the pharynx, of which it is an embryonic 
outgrowth. This part of it somewhat resembles the thyroid 
in structure. Complete removal of the pituitary body in the 
case of cats and dogs causes a lowering of temperature, mus¬ 
cular twitchings and spasms, difficulty in breathing, general 
lassitude, and death within a fortnight. These symptoms 
improve when extract of the gland is injected. The organ 
has therefore been supposed to form an internal secretion use¬ 
ful in maintaining the nutrition of the muscular and nervous 
systems. Disease of the pituitary body in man has been found 
to be associated with the curious condition named acromegaly , 
in which there is hypertrophy of the bones of the limbs and 
face, and of parts of the skin and mucous membranes. In¬ 
jection of the extract of the gland causes, in a normal animal, 
a more powerful but not quicker heart-beat, and constriction 
of the arteries. 

The Suprarenal Capsules or Adrenals are a pair of 
small organs, weighing together about 12 grams (foz.) placed 
one on the top of each kidney. They have, however, no inti¬ 
mate connection with the kidneys, and in many animals are 
placed at some distance from them. Each consists of a denser 
less colored external cortex , and a central deep yellow-brown 
softer medulla. The cortex is subdivided into chambers by 
connective tissue, and the chambers are filled by closely 
packed, polygonal nucleated cells. Similar cells are found 
in the medulla, which is, moreover, closely connected with 
the sympathetic system and is richly supplied with nerves. 

It was noticed some fifty years ago by a physician named 
. Addison that certain obscure diseased conditions characterized 
by great debility and by the appearance of bronzed patches 
on the skin, and leading to death, were found on post-mortem 
examination to be accompanied by disease of the adrenals. 
The disease has hence been named Addison’s disease. When 
the suprarenal capsules are completely removed from animals 
a similar fatal diseased condition results, death taking place 
in warm-blooded animals within two or three days, and be- 


360 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ing preceded by muscular weakness, dilatation of the arteries, 
mental feebleness and general prostration. The exact role 
played in the organism by these small but essential organs is 
still unknown, but they form substances which have a pro¬ 
found effect on the nerves of the heart and blood-vessels. 
A very minute portion of the watery or alcoholic extract of a 
suprarenal capsule when injected into avein of an animal causes 
a very slow heart-beat, or even complete inhibition of the 
auricles. If the cardio-inhibitory nerves have first been cut, 
on the other hand, the injection causes a great increase in 
the rate of heart-beat and a great increase of its force, espe¬ 
cially that of the auricles. The small arteries become greatly 
contracted, and this combined with the powerful heart-beats 
leads to a very great increase of arterial pressure. The arterial 
constriction is not due to stimulation of the vaso-constrictor 
centre, but to a direct action on the muscular coats of the 
arteries: it is very transient. The skeletal muscles are also 
affected, the period of a simple muscular contraction being 
greatly prolonged, and this effect lasts-much longer than the 
changes produced in the organs of circulation. The active 
material exists only in the medulla of the adrenal, is efficient 
in extremely minute doses, is dialyzable, and its efficacy is not 
impaired by short boiling. 

It would appear then that the suprarenals are constantly 
forming and passing into the blood minute quantities of a 
substance which is of great importance for the maintenance 
of the “tone” of the muscles, especially of the cardiac and 
arterial muscles. Whether in addition they also remove 
noxious substances from the blood, the accumulation of which 
after their removal is one cause of the death which results, is 
still undecided. The blood of such animals acts as a poison 
to other animals, and this has been supposed to be due to the 
presence in it of a specific poison which the adrenals normally 
pick up and destroy: but it is clear that the blood of an ani¬ 
mal dying from extensive malnutrition produced in any way 
would be quite abnormal, and might well be poisonous to other 
animals. The same remark may be made as to the poisonous 
character of the blood of animals dying as a result of removal 
of the thyroid: there is no satisfactory evidence that it is due 
to the accumulation of any one special toxic substance which 
it is a function of the thyroid to remove: still, it maybe. 
The symptoms produced by its injection are quite different 
from those produced by injection of thyroid extract. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 


DIGESTION. 

The Object of Digestion. Of the various foodstuffs swal¬ 
lowed, some are already in solution and ready to dialyze at 
once into the lymphatics and blood-vessels of the alimentary 
canal; others, such as a lump of sugar, though not dissolved 
when put into the mouth, are readily soluble in the liquids 
found in the alimentary canal, and need no further digestion. 
In the case of many most important foodstuffs, however, 
special chemical changes have to he wrought, either with the 
object of converting insoluble bodies into soluble, or non- 
dialyzable into dialyzable, or both. The different secretions 
poured into the alimentary tube act in various ways upon 
different foodstuffs, and at last get them into a state in which 
they can pass into the circulating medium and be carried to 
nil parts of the Body. 

The Saliva. The first solvent that the food meets with 
is the saliva, which, as found in the mouth, is a mixture of 
pure saliva, formed in parotid, submaxillary, and sublingual 
glands, with the mucus secreted by small glands of the buccal 
mucous membrane. This mixed saliva is a colorless, cloudy, 
feebly alkaline liquid, “ropy” from the mucin present in it, 
and usually containing air-bubbles. Pure saliva, as obtained 
by putting a fine tube in the duct of one of the salivary 
glands, is more fluid and contains no imprisoned air. 

Usually but little saliva is secreted ; the presence of food 
in the mouth, especially highly flavored or acid food, leads 
to a more abundant flow : the mere chewing of a tasteless 
inert substance will, however, excite some secretion. The secre¬ 
tion thus brought about is reflex: the afferent fibres running 
to the brain in the glossopharyngeal and lingual nerves, and 
exciting there the centre from which the efferent secretory 
nerve-fibres for the glands arise. The centre may be excited 
in other ways: as by nausea, or through the nerves of eye or 
nose when the sight or smell of desirable food makes “ the 
mouth water.” 


361 


362 


TIIE HUMAN BODY. 


The uses of the saliva are for the most part physical and 
mechanical. It keeps the mouth moist and allows us to speak 
with comfort; most young orators know the distress occa¬ 
sioned by the suppression of the salivary secretion through 
nervousness, and the imperfect efficacy under such circum¬ 
stances of the traditional glass of water placed beside public 
speakers. The saliva, also, enables us to swallow dry food; 
such a thing as a cracker when chewed would give rise merely 
to a heap of dust, impossible to swallow, were not the mouth 
cavity kept moist. This fact used to be taken advantage of 
in the East Indian rice ordeal for the detection of criminals. 
The guilty person, believing firmly that he cannot swallow 
the parched rice given him, and fearful of detection, is apt to 
have the nerve-centres of his salivary glands inhibited or 
paralyzed by terror, and does actually become unable to swal¬ 
low the rice; while in those with clear consciences the nerv¬ 
ous system excites the usual reflex secretion, and the dry 
food gives rise to no difficulty in its deglutition. The saliva, 
also, dissolves such bodies as salt and sugar, when they are 
taken into the mouth in solid form, and enables us to taste 
them; undissolved substances are not tasted, a fact which any 
one can verify for himself by wiping his tongue dry and 
placing a fragment of sugar upon it. No sweetness will be 
felt until a little moisture has exuded and dissolved part of 
the sugar. 

In. addition to such actions the saliva, however, exerts a 
chemical one on an important foodstuff. Starch (although 
it swells up greatly in hot water) is insoluble, and could not 
be absorbed from the alimentary canal. The saliva contains 
an enzyme, ptyalin, which has the power of turning starch 
into soluble substances. Until recently the chief product was 
believed to be grape sugar (glucose)) but it is now ascertained 
that it is maltose, belonging to the cane-sugar chemical series. 
In the small intestine the maltose is changed into glucose and 
absorbed; so the chemical action of ptyalin upon starch is at 
most but a preparatory one. In effecting the change the ptyalin 
is not altered; a very small amount of it can convert a vast 
amount of starch, and does not seem to have its activity im¬ 
paired in the process. The starch is made to combine with 
the elements of one or more molecules of water, and the 
ptyalin is unchanged. 

This faculty of ptyalin is known as amylolytic : and since 


DIGESTION. 


363 


it is associated with the taking up of a molecule of water is 
a hydrolytic action. Ptyalin is a typical enzyme ; it differs 
from the true ferments, such as yeast, in the fact that it is 
not a living organism, and does not multiply during the oc¬ 
currence of the change which it sets up; its activity belongs 
to the obscure chemical category of contact actions. 

In order that the ptyalin may act upon starch certain 
conditions are essential. Water must be present, and the 
liquid must be neutral or feebly alkaline; acids retard, or if 
stronger, entirely stop the process. The change takes place 
most quickly at about the temperature of the human Body, 
and is greatly checked by cold. Boiling the saliva destroys 
its ptyalin and renders it quite incapable of converting starch. 
Cooked starch is changed more rapidly and completely than 
raw. 

Saliva has another important but indirect influence in 
promoting digestion. Weak alkalies stimulate the mucous 
membrane of the stomach and cause it to pour forth more 
gastric juice. Hence the efficacy of a little carbonate of soda, 
taken before meals, in some forms of dyspepsia. The saliva 
by its alkalinity exerts such an action; and this is one reason 
why food should be well chewed before being swallowed; for 
then its taste, and the movements of the jaws, cause the 
secretion of more saliva. 

Deglutition. A mouthful of solid food is broken up by 
the ceeth, and rolled about the mouth by the tongue, until it 
is thoroughly mixed with saliva and made into a soft pasty 
mass. The muscles of the cheeks keep this from getting 
between them and the gums; persons with facial paralysis 
have, from time to time, to press out with the finger food 
which has collected outside the gums, where it can neither be 
chewed nor swallowed. The mass is finally sent on from the 
month to the stomach by the process of deglutition, which is 
described as occurring in three stages. The first stage in¬ 
cludes the passage from the mouth into the pharynx. The 
food being collected into a heap on the tongue, the tip of 
that organ is placed against the front of the hard palate, and 
then the rest of the tongue is raised from before back, so as 
to press the food mass between it and the palate, and drive it 
back through the fauces. This portion of the act of swallow- 
ing is voluntary, or at least is under the control of the will, 
although it commonly takes place unconsciously. The second 


364 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


stage of deglutition is that in which the food passes through 
the pharynx; it is the most rapid part of its progress, since 
the pharynx has to be emptied quickly so as to clear the 
opening of the air-passages for breathing purposes. The 
food mass, passing back over the root of the tongue, pushes 
down the epiglottis; at the same time the larynx (or voice- 
box at the top of the windpipe) is raised, so as to meet it, 
and thus the passage to the lungs is closed ; muscles around 
the aperture probably also contract and narrow the opening. 
The raising of the larynx can be readily felt by placing the 
finger on the large cartilage forming “ Adam’s apple ” in the 
neck, and then swallowing something. The soft palate is at 
the same time raised and stretched horizontally across the 
pharynx, thus cutting off communication with its upper, or 
respiratory portion, leading to the nostrils and Eustachian 
tubes. Finally, the isthmus of the fauces is closed as soon as 
the food has passed through, by the contraction of the mus¬ 
cles on its sides and the elevation of the root of the tongue. 
All passages out of the pharynx except the gullet are thus 
blocked, and when the pharyngeal muscles contract the food 
can be squeezed only into the oesophagus. The muscular 
movements concerned in this part of deglutition are all re- 
flexly excited; food coming in contact with the mucous mem¬ 
brane of the pharynx stimulates afferent nerve-fibres in it; 
these excite the centre of deglutition which is placed in the 
medulla oblongata , and from it efferent nerve-fibres proceed 
to the muscles concerned and (under the co-ordinating influ¬ 
ence of the centre) cause them to contract in proper sequence. 
The pharyngeal muscles, although of the striped variety, are 
but little under the control of the will; it is extremely diffi¬ 
cult to go through the movements of swallowing without 
something (if only a little saliva) to swallow and thus excite 
the movements reflexly. Many persons, after having got the 
mouth completely empty cannot perform the movements of 
the second stage of deglutition at all. On account of the re¬ 
flex nature of the contractions of the pharynx, any food which 
has once entered it must be swallowed: the isthmus of the 
fauces is a sort of Rubicon; food that has passed it must 
continue its course to the stomach, although the swallower; 
learnt immediately that he was taking poison. The third 
stage of deglutition is that in which the food is passing along 
the gullet, and is comparatively slow. Even liquid substances 


DIGESTION. 


365 


do not fall or flow down this tube, but have their passage 
controlled by its muscular coats, which grip the successive 
portions swallowed and pass them on. Hence the possibility 
of performing the apparently wonderful feat of drinking a 
glass of water while standing upon the head, often exhibited 
by jugglers; the onlookers forget that the same thing is done 
every day by horses, and other animals, which drink with the 
pharyngeal end of the gullet lower than the stomach. The 
movements of the oesophagus are of the kind known as ver¬ 
micular or peristaltic. Its circular muscular fibres contract 
behind the morsel and narrow the passage there; and the con¬ 
striction then travels along to the stomach, pushing the food 
in front of it. Simultaneously the longitudinal fibres, at the 
point where the food-mass is at any moment and immediately 
in front of that, contracting, shorten and widen the passage. 

The Gastric Juice.—The food having entered the stom¬ 
ach is subjected to the action of the gastric juice, which is a 
thin, colorless or pale yellow liquid, of a strongly acid reac¬ 
tion. It contains as specific elements free hydrochloric acid 
(about .2 per cent), and an enzyme called pepsin which, in 
acid liquids, has the power of converting the ordinary non- 
dialyzable proteids which* we eat, into closely allied bodies, 
some of which are dialyzable and named peptones. It also 
dissolves solid proteids, changing them similarly. Dilute 
acids will by themselves produce the same changes in the 
course of several days, but in the presence of pepsin and at 
the temperature of the Body the conversion is far more 
rapid. In neutral or alkaline media the pepsin is inactive; 
and cold checks its activity. Boiling destroys it. In addi—[— 
tion to pepsin, gastric juice contains another enzyme (renmn) 
which coagulates the caseinogen of milk, as illustrated by 
the use of “rennet,” prepared from the mucous membrane 
of the calf's digestive stomach, in cheese-making. The acid 
of the natural gastric juice would, it is true, precipitate the 
casein, but such precipitate is quite different from the true 
tyrein, and neutralized gastric juice still possesses this power; 
moreover, boiled gastric juice loses the milk-clotting property, 
and a very little normal juice can coagulate a great quantity 
of milk. The curdled condition of the milk regurgitated by 
infants is, therefore, not any sign of a disordered state of the 
stomach, as nurses commonly suppose. It is proper for milk 

I i f ^ 



366 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


to undergo this change, before the pepsin and acid of the 
gastric juice digest it. 

The most important change effected by the gastric juice 
is that of the proteids. This may be studied either on natu¬ 
ral juice obtained from the stomach of an animal through an 
opening (gastric fistula) or on an artificial juice prepared by 
extracting the mucous membrane of a fresh stomach with 
glycerine, and adding a large quantity of dilute (0.2$) hydro¬ 
chloric acid. If blood-fibrin or boiled white of egg be placed 
in such a mixture and kept at a temperature of about 38° C. 
(100° F.) these bodies swell, become transparent, and soon 
dissolve; and all other solid proteids undergo similar changes. 
If the solution be now neutralized a small white precipitate 
of parapeptone (which is probably only ordinary acid albu¬ 
min) is obtained. The filtrate from this gives no precipitate 
on boiling, but an abundant one of albumose on the addition 
of ammonium sulphate. The filtrate from this precipitate 
yields an abundant precipitate of peptone when alcohol is 
added. Peptone is dialyzable, though not so easily as saline 
bodies, and in this differs from albumose and parapeptone 
and all other proteids. The parapeptone is probably a bye- 
product due to the action of the acid of the juice alone: the 
albumose and peptone are true products of peptic digestion of 
proteids, due to their breaking tip with concomitant hy¬ 
dration, the peptone being the more finished or complete 
digestive product. If instead of solid proteids we use solu¬ 
tion of white of egg or of serum albumin, the earlier stages of 
the process cannot be followed by the eye, but the final prod¬ 
ucts are the same: the original proteid disappears, giving 
origin to some parapeptone, to albumose, and to peptone; and 
prolonged artificial peptic digestion causes no further breaking 
up of the albumose or peptone. Peptone is very soluble in 
water, and its solutions are not coagulated by boiling. A\ 
very small amount of pepsin can, if some acid be added from 
time to time, convert a very large amount of proteid: it is de-* 
stroyed by bojlingj 

Gastric Digestion. The process of swallowing is contin¬ 
uous, but in the stomach the onward progress of the food is 
stayed for some time. The pyloric sphincter, remaining con¬ 
tracted, closes the aperture leading into the intestine, and the 
irregularly disposed muscular layers of the stomach keep its 
semi-liquid contents in constant movement, maintaining a 


DIGESTION. 


367 


sort of churning by which all portions are brought into con¬ 
tact with the mucous membrane, and thoroughly mixed with 
the secretion of its glands. The gelatin-yieldiug connective 
tissue of meats is dissolved away, and the proteid-containing 
fibres, left loose, are dissolved and changed. The albuminous 
walls of the fat-cells are dissolved and their oily contents set 
free; but the gastric juice does not act upon the latter. Cer¬ 
tain mineral salts (as phosphate of lime, of which there is 
always some in bread) which are insoluble in water but solu¬ 
ble in dilute acids, are also dissolved in the stomach. On 
the other hand, the gastric juice has itself no action upon 
starch, and since ptyalin does not act at all, or only imper¬ 
fectly, in an acid medium, the activity of the saliva in con¬ 
verting starch is stayed in the stomach. By the solution of 
the white fibrous connective tissue, that disintegration of ani¬ 
mal foods commenced by the teeth, is carried much farther 
in the stomach, and the food-mass, mixed with much gastric 
secretion, becomes reduced to the consistency of a thick soup, 
usually of a grayish color. In this state it is called chyme. 
Chyme contains, after an ordinary meal, much peptone, though 
some of this has been already dialyzed into the gastric mucous 
membrane and carried off along with other dissolved dialyz- 
able bodies, such as salts and sugar. The albumose, fats, and 
starch still remain in the chyme. After the food has re¬ 
mained in the stomach some time (one and a half to two 
hours) the chyme begins to be passed on into the intestine 
in successive portions. The pyloric sphincter relaxes at in¬ 
tervals, and the rest of the stomach, contracting at the same 
moment, injects a quantity of chyme into the duodenum; 
this is repeated frequently, the larger undigested fragments 
being at first unable to pass the orifice, the end of about 
three or four hours after a meal the stomach is again quite 
emptied, the pyloric sphincter finally relaxing to a greater 
extent and allowing any larger indigestible masses, which the 
gastric juice cannot break down, to be driven into the in¬ 
testine. 

The Chyle. When the chyme passes into the duodenum 
it finds preparation made for it. The pancreas is in reflex 
connection with the stomach, and its nerves cause it to com¬ 
mence secreting as soon as food enters the latter; hence a 
quantity of its secretion is already accumulated in the intes¬ 
tine when food enters. The gall-bladder is distended with 


368 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


bile, secreted since the last meal; this passing down the 
hepatic duct has been turned back up the cystic duct (Dc, 
Fig. 115) on account of the closure of the common bile-duct. 
The acid chyme, stimulating nerve-endings in the duodenal 
mucous membrane, causes reflex contraction of the muscular 
coat of the gall-bladder, and a relaxation of the orifice of the 
common bile-duct; and so a gush of bile is poured out on the 
chyme. From this time on, both liver and pancreas continue 
secreting actively for some hours, and pour their products 
into the intestine. The glands of Brunner and the crypts 
of Lieberkuhn are also set at work, but concerning their 
physiology we know very little. All of these secretions are 
alkaline, and they suffice very soon to more than neutralize 
the acidity of the gastric juice, and to convert the acid chyme 
into alkaline chyle, which, after an ordinary meal, will con¬ 
tain a great variety of things: mucus derived from the ali¬ 
mentary canal; ptyalin from the saliva; pepsin from the 
stomach; water, partly swallowed and partly derived from 
the salivary and other secretions; the peculiar constituents of 
the bile and pancreatic juice and of the intestinal secretions; 
some undigested proteids; unchanged starch; oils from the 
fats eaten; peptones formed in the stomach but not yet ab¬ 
sorbed; albumose; parapeptone; possibly salines and sugar 
which have also escaped absorption in the stomach; and in¬ 
digestible substances taken with the food. 

The Pancreatic Secretion is clear, watery, alkaline, and 
much like saliva in appearance. The Germans call the pan¬ 
creas the “abdominal salivary gland.” In digestive prop¬ 
erties, however, the pancreatic secretion is far more impor¬ 
tant than the saliva, or even the gastric juice. Starch 
it changes as the saliva does, but converts it into maltose 
more quickly : and it acts also on proteids and fats. It 
is by far the most important of all the digestive secretions. 
All proteids not already converted into peptone or albumose 
are acted upon by the pancreatic juice even more ener¬ 
getically than in the stomach, being not only converted into 
peptone, but in part further broken up, if the digestion (arti¬ 
ficial) be prolonged, and converted into crystallizable nitrog¬ 
enous bodies which, unlike peptone, retain no proteid-like 
characters: the chief of these are leucin and tyrosin, the 
former allied chemically to the fatty acids, the other to bodies 
of the aromatic series. In normal digestion, however, it is 


DIGESTION. 


369 


probable that but little of the proteid is broken up beyond 
the peptone stage, and all of it never is; an albumose is 
formed as an intermediate product. The enzyme concerned is 
trypsin ; it is active only in an alkaline or neutral medium, 
and before dissolving solid proteids does not cause them to 
swell and become transparent as pepsin does. Like the other 
digestive ferments, it is most active at about the temperature 
of the Body, and is destroyed by boiling. On fats the pan¬ 
creatic secretion has a double action. To a certain extent it 
breaks them up, with hydration, into free fatty acids and 
glycerin; for example— 


(C js H S5 0) 3 

C„H c 


1 Stearin 


} O, + 3H,0 = 

+ 3 Water = 



3 Stearic acid + 1 Glycerine. 


The fatty acid then combines with some of the alkali present 
to make a soap , which being soluble in water is capable of 
absorption. Glycerin, also, is soluble in water and dialyz- 
able. The greater part of the fats are not, however, so broken 
up, but are simply mechanically separated into droplets, 
which remain suspended in the chyle and give it a whitish 
color, just as the cream-drops are suspended in milk, or the 
olive-oil in mayonnaise sauce. This is effected by the help of 
a quantity of albumin which exists dissolved in the pancreatic 
secretion. In the stomach, the animal fats eaten have lost 
their cell-walls, and have become melted by the temperature 
to which they were exposed. Hence their oily part floats free 
in the chyme when it enters the duodenum. If oil be shaken 
up with water, the two cannot be got to mix; immediately 
the shaking ceases, the oil floats up to the top; but if some 
raw egg be added, a creamy mixture is readily formed, in 
which the oil remains for a long time evenly suspended in 
the watery menstruem. The reason of this is that each oil- 
droplet becomes surrounded by a delicate pellicle of albumin, 
and is thus prevented from fusing with its neighbors to make 
large drops, which would soon float to the top. Such a mix¬ 
ture is called an emulsion, and the albumin of the pancreatic 
secretion emulsifies the oils in the chyle, which becomes 
white (for the same reason as milk is that color) because the 
innumerable tiny oil-drops floating in it reflect all the light 
which falls on its surface. 

In brief, the pancreatic secretion converts starch into 


370 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


maltose ; dissolves proteids (if necessary) and converts them 
into peptones; emulsifies fats, and, to a certain extent, breaks 
them up into glycerin and fatty acids; the latter are then 
saponified by the alkalies present. 

The Bile.—Human bile when quite fresh is a golden 
brown liquid; it becomes green when kept. As formed in 
the liver it contains hardly any mucin, but if it make any 
stay in the gall-bladder it acquires much from the lining mem¬ 
brane of that bag, and becomes slimy and “ropy.” It is 
alkaline in reaction and, besides coloring matters (the more 
important of which, bilirubin , is probably a waste product 
derived from haemoglobin), contains mineral salts and water, 
and the sodium salts of two nitrogenized acids, taurocholic 
and glychocholic, the former predominating in human bile. 

Pettenkofer’s Bile Test. If a small fragment of cane 
sugar be added to some bile, and then a large quantity of strong 
sulphuric acid, a brilliant purple color is developed, by cer¬ 
tain products of the decomposition of the bile acids; the 
physician can by this test, in disease, detect their presence in 
the urine or other secretions of the Body. Gmelin’s Bile 
Test. The bile-coloring matters, treated with yellow nitric 
acid, go through a series of oxidations, accompanied with 
changes of color from yellow-brown to green, then to blue, 
violet, purple, red, and dirty yellow. 

Bile has no digestive action upon starch or proteids. It 
does not break up fats, but to a limited extent emulsifies 
them, though far less perfectly than the pancreatic secretion. 
It is even doubtful whether this action is exerted in the in¬ 
testines at all. In many animals, as in man, the bile and 
pancreatic ducts open together into the duodenum, so that, 
on killing a dog during digestion and finding emulsified fats 
in the chyle, it is impossible to say whether or no the bile 
had a share in the process. In the rabbit, however, the pan¬ 
creatic duct opens into the intestine about a foot farther 
from the stomach than the bile-duct, and it is found that if a 
rabbit be killed after being fed with oil, no milky chyle is 
found down to the point where the pancreatic duct opens. 
In this animal, therefore, the bile alone does not emulsify 
fats, and, since the bile is pretty much the same in it and 
other mammals, it probably does not emulsify fats in them 
either. From the inertness of bile with respect to most foods 
stuffs it has been doubted whether it be of any digestive use at 


DIGESTION. 


371 


all, and whether it should not be regarded merely as an excre¬ 
tion, poured into the alimentary canal to be got rid of. But 
there are many reasons against such a view. In the first place, 
the entry of the bile into the upper end of the small intestine 
where it has to traverse a course of more than twenty feet 
before getting out of the Body, instead of its being sent into 
the rectum, close to the final opening of the alimentary canal, 
makes it probable that it has some function to fulfil in 



/intestine. Moreover, a great part of the bile, including prac¬ 
tically all the bile salts, poured into the intestines is again 
absorbed from them ; this seems to show that part of the bile 
is secreted for some other purpose than mere elimination 
from the Body. One subsidiary use is to assist, by its alka¬ 
linity, in overcoming the acidity of the chyme, and so to 
allow the trypsin of the pancreatic secretion to act upon pro- 
teids. Constipation is, also, apt to occur in cases where the 
bile-duct is temporarily stopped, so that bile probably helps to 
excite the contractions of the muscular coats of the intestine; 
under similar circumstances putrefactive decompositions are 
apt to occur in the intestinal contents. Apart from such sec¬ 
ondary influences,however, the bile probably has some influence 
in promoting the absorption of fats. If one end of a capillary 
glass tube, moistened with water, be dipped in oil, the latter will 
not ascend in it, or but a short way; but if the tube be moist¬ 
ened with bile, instead of water, the oil will ascend higher in 
it. So, too, oil passes through a plug of porous clay kept moist 
with bile, under a much lower pressure than through one wet 
with water. Hence bile, by soaking the epithelial cells lining 
the intestine, may facilitate the passage into the villi of oily 
substances. At any rate, experiment shows that if the bile 
be prevented from entering the intestine of a dog, the animal 
eats an enormous amount of food compared with that 
amount which it needed previously; and that of this food a 
great proportion of the fatty parts passes out of the alimen¬ 
tary canal unabsorbed. There is no doubt, therefore, that 
the bile somehow aids in the absorption of fats, but exactly 
how is uncertain. Its possible action in exciting the muscles 
of the villi to contract will be referred to presently. 

The Intestinal Secretions or Succus Entericus. These 
consist of the secretions of the glands of Brunner and the 
crypts of Lieberkuhn. It is difficult to obtain them pure; in¬ 
deed the product of Brunner’s glands has never been obtained 




cvk d 




/ 


372 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


* 


unmixed. That of the crypts of Lieberkuhn is watery and 
alkaline, and poured out more abundantly during digestion 
than at other times. It has no special action on starches, 
most proteids, or on fats; but is said to dissolve blood fibrin 
and convert it into peptone, and it changes maltose into 
grape sugar; so that this cane sugar is turned into a grape 
sugar before being absorbed. Mucus is also formed and 
poured out abundantly by the epithelium cells of the intes¬ 
tinal lining membrane. It is more especially secreted during 
fasting, and by its stickiness collects debris and keeps the 
mucous membrane clean. 

Intestinal Digestion. Having considered separately the 
actions of the secretions which the food meets with in the 
small intestine we may now consider their combined effect. 

The neutralization of the chyme, followed by its conver¬ 
sion into alkaline chyle, will prevent any further action of 
the pepsin on proteids, but will allow the ptyalin of the 
saliva (the activity of which was stopped by the acidity of the 
gastric juice) to recommence its action upon starch. More¬ 
over, in the stomach there is produced, alongside of the albu- 
mose and true peptone, the parapeptone, which agrees very 
closely with syntonin in its properties, and this passes into 
the duodenum in the chyme. As soon as the bile meets 
the chyme it precipitates the parapeptone, and this carries 
down with it any peptones which, having escaped absorption 
in the stomach, may be present; it also precipitates the pep¬ 
sin. In consequence, one finds in an animal killed during 
digestion, a granular precipitate over the villi, and in the 
folds between the valvulae conniventes of the duodenum. 
This is redissolved by the pancreatic secretion, which also 
changes into peptone the proteids (usually a considerable pro¬ 
portion of those eaten at a meal) which have passed through 
the stomach unchanged, or as albumose or parapeptone. The 
conversion of starch into maltose will go on very rapidly under 
the influence of the pancreatic secretion. Fats will be split 
up and saponified to a certain extent, but a far larger pro¬ 
portion will be emulsified and give the chyle a whitish appear¬ 
ance. Later cane sugar, which may have escaped absorption in 
the stomach, and maltose will be converted into grape sugar 
and absorbed, along with such salines as may, also, have hith¬ 
erto escaped. Elastic tissue from animal substanoes eaten. 



DIGESTION. 


373 


cellulose from plants, and mucin from the secretions of the 
alimentary tract, will all remain unchanged. 

Absorption from the Small Intestine. The chyme leav¬ 
ing the stomach is a semi-liquid mass which, mixed in the 
duodenum with considerable quantities of pancreatic secre¬ 
tion and bile, is further diluted.7) Thenceforth it gets the 
intestinal secretion added to it, but the absorption more 
than counterbalancing the addition of liquid, the food- 
mass becomes more and more solid as it approaches the ileo¬ 
colic valve. At the same time it becomes poorer in nutritive 
constituents, these being gradually removed from it in its 
progress; most dialyze through the epithelium into the sub¬ 
jacent blood and lymphatic vessels, and are carried off. 
Those passing into the blood capillaries are taken by the por¬ 
tal vein to the liver; while those entering the lacteals are 
carried into the left jugular vein by the thoracic duct. As 
to which foodstuffs go one road and which the other, there is 
still much doubt; sugars probably go by the portal system, 
while the fats, mainly, if not entirely, go through the lacteals. 
How the fats are absorbed is not clear, since oils will not dia¬ 
lyze through membranes, such as that lining the intestine, 
moistened "with watery liquids. Most of them, nevertheless, 
get into the lacteals as oils and not as soluble soaps; for one 
finds these vessels, in a digesting animal, filled with white 
milky chyle; while at other periods their contents are watery 
and colorless like the lymph elsewhere in the Body. The 
little fat-drops of the emulsion formed in the intestine, go 
through the epithelial cells and not between them, for during 
digestion these cells are loaded with oil-droplets; as their 
free ends are striated and probably devoid of any definite 
cell-wall, it is possible that the intestinal movements squeeze 
oil-drops into them, but the cells may play a more active part. 
The striation of the border is due to closely-set rods which 
are known to be able to change their form, and it is possible 
that they actively seize oil-droplets and other minute solid 
food particles. The cell passes the fat to its deeper end 
and, thence, out into the subjacent lymphoid tissue. It is 
probable that here certain amoeboid cells of the adenoid 
tissue pick it up, and carry it into the central lacteal of a villus, 
where they break up and set it free. In the villus there are 
all the anatomical arrangements for a mechanism which shall 
actively suck substances into it. Each is more or less 


874 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


elastic, and moreover, its capillary network when filled with 
blood will distend it. If its plain muscular layer contracts 
and compresses it, causing its central lacteal to empty into 
vessels lying deeper in the intestinal wall, the villus will 
actively expand again so soon as its muscles relax. In so 
doing it cannot fill its lacteals from the deeper vessels on 
account of the valves in the latter, and, accordingly, must 
tend to draw into itself materials from the intestines; much 
like a sponge re-expanding in water, after having been 
squeezed dry. The liquid thus sucked up may draw oil-drops 
with it, into the free ends of the cells and between them; and 
by repetitions of the process it is possible that considerable 
quantities of liquid, with suspended oil-drops, might be car¬ 
ried into the epithelial cells covering a villus. The bile 
moistening the surface of the villus may facilitate the passage 
of oil, and it is also said to stimulate the contractions of the 
villi; if so, its efficacy in promoting the absorption of fats 
will be explained, in spite of its chemical inertness with re¬ 
spect to those bodies. There is also reason to believe that a 
good deal of the emulsified fat is also directly picked up by 
amoeboid corpuscles, which push their way between the 
epithelial cells and thrusting processes into the intestine, pick 
up oil-droplets, and then travel back and convey their load 
to the lacteal. 

The path taken by peptones is uncertain. They seem to 
be Very rapidly converted into proteids (? serum albumin) after 
absorption as they cannot be found, or only traces of them, 
in the thoracic duct or the portal vein blood of a digesting 
animal. Moreover, peptones directly injected into the blood 
are poisonous. Probably they are seized upon and trans¬ 
formed by the cells of the lymphoid tissue. 

Digestion in the Large Intestine. The contractions of 
the small intestine drive on its continually diminishing con¬ 
tents until they reach the ileo-colic valve, through which 
they are ultimately pressed. As a rule, when the mass enters 
the large intestine its nutritive portions have been almost 
entirely absorbed, and it consists merely of some water, with 
the indigestible portion of the food and of the secretions of 
the alimentary canal. It contains cellulose, elastic tissue, 
mucin, and somewhat-altered bile pigments; some fat if a 
large quantity has been eaten; and some starch, if raw vege¬ 
tables have formed part of the diet. In its progress through 


DIGESTION. 


375 


the large intestine it loses more water, and the digestion of 
starch and the absorption of fats is continued. Finally the 
residue, with some excretory matters added to it in the large 
intestine, collects in the sigmoid flexure of the colon and in 
the rectum, and is sent out of the Body from the latter. 

The Digestion of an Ordinary Meal. We may best sum 
up the facts stated in this chapter by considering the diges¬ 
tion of a common meal; say a breakfast consisting of bread 
and butter, beefsteak, potatoes and milk. Many of these 
substances contain several alimentary principles, and, since 
these are digested in different ways and in different parts of 
the alimentary tract, the first thing to be done is to consider 
what are the proximate constituents of each. We thus sepa¬ 
rate the materials of the breakfast as in table on next page. 

From such a meal we may first separate the elastin, cellu¬ 
lose, and calcium sulphate, as indigestible and passed out of 
the Body in the same state and in the same quantity as they 
entered it. Then come the salines which need no special 
digestion, and, taken either in solution or dissolved in the 
saliva or gastric juice, are absorbed from the mouth, stomach, 
and intestines without further change. Cane and grape 
sugars experience the same lot, except that any cane sugar 
or maltose reaching the intestines before absorption is 
changed into grape sugar by the succus entericus. Calcium 
phosphate will be dissolved by the free acid in the stomach, 
yielding calcium chloride, which will be absorbed there or in 
the intestine. Starch will be partially converted into maltose 
during mastication and deglutition, and it is possible that 
some of this sugar may be absorbed from the stomach. 
A great part of the starch will, however, be passed on 
into the intestine unchanged, since the action of saliva is 
suspended in the stomach; and its conversion will be com¬ 
pleted by the pancreatic secretion, and perhaps by the ptyalin, 
though this is probably destroyed in the stomach by the gastric 
juice; but in any case the starch will only have been changed 
to maltose, and will need further digestive treatment. The 
various proteids will be partially dissolved in the stomach 
and converted into peptone, which will in part be absorbed 
there; the residue, with the undigested proteids, will be 
passed on to the intestines. There the bile will precipitate 
the peptones and parapeptones and, with the pancreatic 
secretion, render the chyme alkaline, and so stop the activity 


TABLE SHOWING THE ALIMENTARY PRINCIPLES EATEN AT AN ORDINARY MEAL, 


376 


TEE HUMAN BODY. 


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DIGESTION ,: 


377 


of the gastric pepsin. The pancreatic secretion will, how¬ 
ever, redissolve the precipitated peptone, and the unchanged 
proteids and parapeptone and the albumose, and turn the 
three last into peptone, breaking up part of this into leucin 
and tyrosin; these will be absorbed as they pass along the 
small intestine; a small quantity perhaps passing into the 
large intestine, to be taken up there. The fats will remain 
unchanged until they enter the small intestine, except that 
the proteid cell-walls of the adipose tissue of the beefsteak 
will be dissolved away. In the small intestine some of these 
little oil masses will be in part saponified, but most will be 
emulsified and taken up into the lacteals in that condition. 
Gelatin, from the white fibrous tissue of the beefsteak, will 
undergo changes in the stomach and intestine, and be dis¬ 
solved and absorbed. 

The substances leaving the alimentary canal after such a 
meal would be, primarily, the indigestible cellulose and 
elastin, and some water. But there might also be some unab¬ 
sorbed fats, starch, and salts. To these would be added, in 
the alimentary canal, mucin, some of the ferments of the di¬ 
gestive secretions, some slightly altered bile pigments, and 
other bodies excreted by the large intestine. 

Dyspepsia is the common name of a number of diseased 
conditions attended with loss of appetite or troublesome 
digestion. Being often unattended with acute pain, and if 
it kills at all doing so very slowly, it is pre-eminently suited 
'for treatment by domestic quackery. In reality, however, 
the immediate cause of the symptoms, and the treatment 
called for, may vary widely; and their detection and the 
choice of the proper remedial agents often call for more than 
ordinary medical skill. A few' of the more common forms 
of dyspepsia may be mentioned here, with their proximate 
causes, not in order to enable people to undertake the rash 
experiment of dosing themselves, but to show how wide a # 
chance there is for any unskilled treatment to miss its end, 
and do more harm than good. 

Appetite is primarily due to a condition of the mucous 
membrane of the stomach which, in health, comes on after a 
short fast, and stimulates its sensory nerves; and loss of appe¬ 
tite may be due to either of several causes. The stomach 
may be apathetic and lack its normal sensibility, so that the 
empty condition does not act, as it normally does, as a suffi- 


378 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


cient excitant. When food is taken it is a further stimulus 
and may be enough; in such cases “appetite comes with eat¬ 
ing.” A bitter before a meal is useful as an appetizer to 
patients of this sort. On the other hand, the stomach may 
be too sensitive, and a voracious appetite be felt before a 
meal, which is replaced by nausea, or even vomiting, as soon 
as a few mouthfuls have been swallowed; the extra stimulus 
of the food then overstimulates the too irritable stomach, 
just as a draught of mustard and warm water will a healthy 
one. The proper treatment in such cases is a soothing one. 
When food is taken it ought to stimulate the sensory gastric 
nerves, so as to excite the reflex centres for the secretory 
nerves, and for the dilatation of the blood-vessels of the 
organ; if it does not, the gastric juice will be imperfectly 
secreted. In such cases one may stimulate the secretory 
nerves by weak alkalies, as certain mineral waters or a little 
carbonate of soda, before meals; or give drugs, as strychnine, 
which increase the irritability of reflex nerve-centres. The 
vascular dilatation may be helped by warm drinks, and this is 
probably the rationale of the glass of hot water after eating 
which has often been found useful; the usual small cup of 
hot coffee after dinner is a more agreeable form of the same 
aid to digestion. In states of general debility, when the 
stomach is too feeble to secrete under any stimulation, the 
administration of weak acids and artificially prepared pepsin 
is needed, to supply gastric juice from outside, until the im¬ 
proved digestion strengthens the stomach up to the point of 
being able to do its own work. 

Enough has probably been said to show that dysjiepsia is 
not a disease, but a symptom accompanying many pathologi¬ 
cal conditions, requiring special knowledge for their treat¬ 
ment. From its nature—depriving the Body of its proper 
nourishment—it tends to intensify itself, and so should never 
be neglected; a stitch in time saves nine. 

The Movements of the Intestines. When the abdomen 
of a living anaesthetized animal is opened, especially during 
digestion, contractions are seen slowly travelling along the 
bowels, which have in consequence somewhat the ^appearance 
of a writhing mass of worms, hence the name vermicular 
often given to these movements: they are also called peri- 
staltic. On observing a portion of the gut a narrowing due 
to contraction of its circular muscular coat will be seen to 


DIGESTION. 


379 


pass slowly along it, normally in a direction towards the 
rectum; these contractions push before them part of the con¬ 
tents of the intestine. The simultaneous contractions of the 
outer longitudinal layer of the muscular coat are not so 
marked or so easily directly observable. If the bowels be 
entirely removed from the body of the animal the movements 
go on for some time, so they are obviously not directly de¬ 
pendent on extrinsic nerves. They are probably primarily 
due to a slight automaticity of the muscle itself, which as in 
the case of the heart (Chap. XVII) is favored by distension, but 
they may be due to nerve impulses arising in the cells of the 
plexus of Auerbach. As in the case of the heart these move¬ 
ments are under control of extrinsic nerve-fibres, originating: 
in the cerebro-spinal centre, and these fibres are excitor and 
depressor. Exactly contrary to that which we find in the 
case of the heart, the fibres reaching the intestines through 
the pneumogastrics are excitor, causing more powerful con¬ 
tractions, and the fibres coming from the sympathetic through; 
the splanchnics (where they are mixed with but quite dis¬ 
tinct from the vaso-constrictor fibres) are inhibitory. Stimu¬ 
lation of the splanchnic nerves will bring actively contract¬ 
ing intestines to rest. The influence of the central nervous 
system on the motions of the bowel is shown by the contrac¬ 
tions caused by fright or other strong emotions, illustrated 
by the Hebrew phrase “ bowels moved with compassion/* 
Deficiency of arterial blood excites powerful intestinal con¬ 
tractions. The various purgative medicines act in very differ¬ 
ent ways ; some directly on the intestinal neuro-muscular 
apparatus; some on the extrinsic nerve centres concerned; 
some (as Epsom salts) mainly by causing a great secretion of 
liquid into the bowel and so distending it. 



CHAPTER XXV. 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 

Definitions. The blood as it flows from the right ventri¬ 
cle of the heart, through the lungs, to the left auricle, loses 
carbon dioxide and gains oxygen. In the systemic circula¬ 
tion exactly the reverse changes take place, oxygen leaving 
the blood to supply the living tissues; and carbon dioxide, gen¬ 
erated in them, passing back into the blood capillaries. The 
oxygen loss and carbon dioxide gain are associated with a 
change in the color of the blood from bright scarlet to purple 
red, or from arterial to venous; and the opposite changes in 
the lungs restore to the dark blood its bright tint. The whole 
set of processes through which blood becomes venous in the 
systemic circulation and arterial in the pulmonary—in 
other words the processes concerned in the gaseous reception, 
distribution and elimination of the Body—constitute the 
function of respiration ; so much of this as is concerned in 
the interchanges between the blood and air being known as 
external respiration; while the interchanges occurring in 
the systemic capillaries, and the processes in general by 
which oxygen is fixed and carbon dioxide formed by the liv¬ 
ing tissues, are known as internal respiration. When the 
term respiration is used alone, without any limiting adjective, 
the external respiration only, is commonly meant. 

Respiratory Organs. The blood being kept poor in oxy¬ 
gen and rich in carbon dioxide by the action of the living 
tissues, a certain amount of gaseous interchange will nearly 
always take place when it comes into close proximity to the 
surrounding medium; whether this be the atmosphere itself 
or water containing air in solution. When an animal is 
small there are often no special organs for its external res¬ 
piration, its general surface being sufficient (especially in 
aquatic animals with a moist skin) to permit of all the gas¬ 
eous exchange that is necessary. In the simplest creatures, 
indeed, there is even no blood, the cell or cells composing 

380 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


381 


them taking np for themselves from their environment the 
oxygen which they need, and passing out into it their car¬ 
bon dioxide waste; in other words, there is no differen¬ 
tiation of the external and internal respirations. When, 
however, an animal is larger many of its cells are so far from 
a free surface that they cannot transact this give-and-take 
with the surrounding medium directly, and the blood, or 
some liquid representing it in this respect, serves as a mid¬ 
dleman between the living tissues and the external oxygen; 
and then one usually finds special respiratory organs devel¬ 
oped, to which the blood is brought to make good its oxygen 
loss and get rid of its excess of carbon dioxide. In aquatic 
animals such organs take commonly the form of gills; these 
are protrusions of the body over which a constant current of 
water, containing oxygen in solution, is kept up; and in 
which blood capillaries form a close network immediately be¬ 
neath the surface. In air-breathing animals a different ar¬ 
rangement is usually found. In some, as frogs, it is true, the 
skin is always moist and serves as an important respiratory 
organ, large quantities of venous blood being sent to it for 
aeration. But for the occurrence of the necessary gaseous 
diffusion, the skin must be kept very moist, and this, in a 
terrestrial animal, necessitates a great amount of secretion by 
the cutaneous glands to compensate for evaporation; accord¬ 
ingly in most land animals the air is carried into the body 
through tubes with narrow external orifices and so the drying 
up of the breathing surfaces is greatly diminished; just as 
water in a bottle with a narrow neck will evaporate much more 
slowly than the same amount exposed in an open dish. In 
insects (as bees, butterflies, and beetles) the air is carried by 
tubes which split up into extremely fine branches and ramify 
all through the body, even down to the individual tissue ele¬ 
ments, which thus carry on their gaseous exchanges without 
the intervention of blood. But in the great majority of 
air-breathing animals the arrangement is different; the air- 
tubes leading from the exterior of the body do not subdivide 
into branches which ramify all through it, but open into one 
or more large sacs to which the venous blood is brought, and 
in whose walls it flows through a close capillary network. 
Such respiratory sacs are called lungs, and it is a highly de¬ 
veloped form of them which is employed in the Human 
Body. 

The Air-Passages and Lungs. In our own Bodies some 


382 


THE HUMAN BOLT. 



small amount of respiration is carried on in the alimentary 

canal, the air swallowed with food 
or saliva undergoing gaseous ex¬ 
changes with the blood in the gas¬ 
tric and intestinal mucous mem¬ 
branes. The amount of oxygen 
thus obtained by the blood is 
however very trivial, as is that 
absorbed through the skin, cov¬ 
ered as it is by its dry horny non- 
vascular epidermis. All the really 
essential gaseous interchanges be¬ 
tween the Body and the atmos¬ 
phere take place in the lungs, two 
large sacs ( lu , Fig. 1) lying in the 
thoracic cavity, one on each side 
of the heart. To these sacs the 
air is conveyed through a series of 
passages. Entering the pharynx 
through the nostrils or mouth, 
it passes out of this by the open¬ 
ing leading into the larynx, or 
voice-box ( a , Fig. 122), lying in 
the upper part of the neck (the communication of the two 
is seen in Fig. 107); from the larynx passes back the trachea 
or windpipe, b, which, after entering the chest cavity, divides 
into the right and left bronchi, d, e. Each bronchus divides 
up into smaller and smaller branches, called bronchial tubes , 
within the lung on its own side; and the smallest bronchial 
tubes end in sacculated dilatations, the infundibula of the 
lungs, the sacculations (Fig. 124) being the alveoli: the word 
“ cell ” being here used in its prim- * 
itive sense of a small cavity, and 
not in its later technical significa¬ 
tion of a morphological unit of 
the Body. On the walls of the 
air-cells the pulmonary capillaries 
ramify, and it is in them that the 
interchanges of the external res¬ 
piration take place. 

Structure of the Trachea and 
Bronchi. The windpipe may 
readily be felt in the middle line of the neck, a little below 


Fig. 122.—The lungs and air- 
passages seen from the front. On 
the left of the figure the pulmo¬ 
nary tissue has been dissected 
away to show the ramifications of 
the bronchial tubes, a, larynx ; 
6, trachea ; d, right bronchus. 
The left bronchus is seen entering 
the root of its lung. 



Fig. 123.—A small bronchial tube, 
a, dividing into its terminal branch¬ 
es, c; these have pouched or saccu¬ 
lated walls and end in the saccu¬ 
lated infundibula, b. 





THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


383 


Adam’s apple, as a rigid cylindrical mass. It consists funda¬ 
mentally of a fibrous tube in which cartilages are imbedded, 
so as to keep it from collapsing; and is lined internally by a 
mucous membrane covered by several layers of epithelium 
cells, of which the superficial is ciliated. The elastic car¬ 
tilages imbedded in its walls are imperfect rings, each some¬ 
what the shape of a horse shoe, and the deficient part of 
each ring being turned backwards, it comes to pass that the 
deeper or dorsal side of the windpipe has no hard parts in it. 
Against this side the gullet lies, and the absence there of the 
cartilages no doubt facilitates swallowing. The bronchi re¬ 
semble the windpipe in structure. 

The Structure of the Lungs. These consist of the bron¬ 
chial tubes and their terminal dilatations; numerous blood¬ 
vessels, nerves and lymphatics; and an abundance of connec¬ 
tive tissue, rich in elastic fibres, binding all together. The 
bronchial tubes ramify in a tree-like manner (Fig. 122). In 
structure the larger ones resemble the trachea, except that 
the cartilage rings are not regularly arranged so as to have 
their open parts all turned one way. As the tubes become 
smaller their constituents thin away; the cartilages become 
less frequent and finally disappear; the epithelium is re¬ 
duced to a single layer of cells which, though still ciliated, 
are much shorter than the columnar superficial cell-layer of 
the larger tubes. The terminal 
alveoli {a, a , Fig. 124), and the 
air-cells, J), which open into them, 
have walls composed mainly of 
elastic tissue and lined by a 
single layer of flat, non-ciliated 
epithelium, immediately beneath 
which is a very close network 
of capillary blood-vessels. The 
air entering by the bronchial tube 
is thus only separated from the 
blood by the thin capillary wall 
and the thin epithelium, both of 
which are moist, and well adapted 
to permit gaseous diffusion. 

The Pleura. Each lung is 
covered, except at one point, by 
an elastic serous membrane which adheres tightly to it and 



Fig. 124.—Two infundibula of the 
lung: much magnified b , b. the air- 
cells, or hollow protrusions of the 
alveolus, opening into its central 
cavity; c, terminal branches of a 
bronchial tube 


384 


THE HI MAN BODY. 


is called the pleura; that point at which the pleura is 
wanting is called the root of the lung and is on its 
median side; it is there that its bronchus, blood-vessels and 
nerves enter it. At the root of the lung the pleura turns 
back and lines the inside of the chest cavity, as represented 
by the dotted line in the diagram Fig. 3. The part of the 
pleura attached to each lung is its visceral, and that attached 
to the chest-wall its parietal layer. Each pleura thus forms 
a closed sac surrounding a pleural cavity , in which, during 
health, there are found a few drops of lymph, keeping its 
surfaces moist. This lessens friction between the two layers 
during the movements of the chest-walls and the lungs; for 
although, to insure distinctness, the visceral and parietal 
layers of the pleura are represented in the diagram as not in 
contact, that is not the natural condition of things; the lungs 
are in life distended so that the visceral pleura rubs against 
the parietal, and the pleural cavity is practically obliterated. 
This is due to the pressure of the atmosphere exerted through 
the air-passages on the interior of the lungs. The lungs are 
extremely elastic and distensible, and when the chest cavity 
is perforated each shrivels up just as an indian-rubber blad¬ 
der does when its neck is opened; the reason being that then 
the air presses on the outside of each with as much force as 
it does on the inside. These two pressures neutralizing one 
another, there is nothing to overcome the tendency of the 
lungs to collapse. So long as the chest-walls are whole, how¬ 
ever, the lungs remain distended. The pleural sac is air-tight 
and contains no air, and the pressure of the air around the 
Body is borne by the rigid walls of the chest and prevented 
from reaching the lungs; consequently no atmospheric pres¬ 
sure is exerted on their outside. On their interior, however, 
the atmosphere presses with its full weight, 
equal to about 90 centigrams on a square 
centimeter (14.5 lbs. on the square inch), and 
this is far more than sufficient to dis¬ 
tend the lungs so as to make them com¬ 
pletely fill all the parts of the thoracic cav¬ 
ity not occupied by other organs. Suppose 
illustrating The*pres- A (Fig. 125) to be a bottle closed air-tiglit 
th^iungs^irT^he^ho- by a cor ^ through which two tubes pass, 
rax - one of which, b, leads into an elastic bag, 

d, and the other, c, provided with a stop-cock, opens freely 










THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


385 


below into the bottle. When the stop-cock, c, is open 
the air will enter the bottle and press there on the out¬ 
side of the bag, as well as on its inside through b. The bag 
will therefore collapse, as the lungs do when the chest cavity 
is opened. But if some air be sucked out through c the pres¬ 
sure of that remaining in the bottle will diminish, and of that 
inside the bag will be unchanged, and the bag will thus be blown 
up, because the atmospheric pressure on its interior will not be 
balanced by that on its exterior. At last, when all the air is 
sucked out of the bottle and the stop-cock on c closed, the 
bag, if sufficiently distensible, will be expanded so as to com¬ 
pletely fill the bottle and press against its inside, and the 
state of things will then answer to that naturally found in 
the chest. If the bottle were now increased in size without 
letting air into it, the bag would expand still more, so as to 
fill it, and in so doing would receive air from outside through 
b ; and if the bottle then returned to its original size, its 
walls would press on the bag and cause it to shrink and 
expel some of its air through b. Exactly the same must of 
course happen, under similar circumstances, in the chest, the 
windpipe answering to the tube b through which air enters 
or leaves the elastic sac. 

The Respiratory Movements. The air taken into the 
lungs soon becomes laden in them with carbon dioxide, and 
at the same time loses much of its oxygen; these interchanges 
take place mainly in the deep recesses of the alveoli, far from 
the exterior and only communicating with it through a long 
tract of narrow tubes. The alveolar air, thus become unfit 
to any longer convert venous blood into arterial, could only 
very slowly be renewed by gaseous diffusion with the atmos¬ 
phere through the long air-passages—not nearly fast enough 
for the requirements of the Body, as one learns by the sensa¬ 
tion of suffocation which follows holding the breath for a 
short time with mouth and larynx open. Consequently co¬ 
operating with the lungs is a respiratory mechanism , by 
which the air within them is periodically mixed with fresh 
air taken from the outside, and also the air in the alveoli is 
stirred up so as to bring fresh layers of it in contact with the 
walls of the air-cells. This mixing is brought about by the 
breathing movements, consisting of regularly alternating in¬ 
spirations , during which the chest cavity is enlarged and 
fresh air enters the lungs, and expirations , in which the cav- 


386 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Ity is diminished and air expelled from the lungs. When the 
chest is enlarged the air the lungs contain immediately dis¬ 
tends them so as to fill the larger space; in so doing it be¬ 
comes rarefied and less dense than the external air; and since 
gases flow from points of greater to those of less pressure, 
some outside air at once flows in by the air-passages and 
•enters the lungs. In expiration the reverse takes place. The 
ohest cavity, diminishing, presses on the lungs and makes the 
air inside them denser than the external air, and so some 
passes out until an equilibrium of pressure is restored. The 
chest, in fact, acts very much like a bellows. When the bel¬ 
lows are opened air enters in 
consequence of the rarefaction 
of that in the interior, which 
is expanding to fill the larger 
space; and when the bellows 

Fig. 126.— Diagram to illustrate the en- are cloSed a S ain it; is expelled. 

try of air to the lungs when the thoracic To make the bellows Quite 

cavity enlarges. n 

like the lungs we must, how¬ 
ever, as in Fig. 126, have only one opening in them, that of 
the nozzle, for both the entry and exit of the air; and this 
opening should lead, not directly into the bellows cavity, but 
into an elastic bag lying in it, and tied to the inner end of 
the nozzle-pipe. This sac would represent the lungs and the 
space between its outside and the inside of the bellows, the 
pleural cavities. 

We have next to see how the expansion and contraction 
of the chest cavity are brought about. 

The Structure of the Thorax. The thoracic cavity has 
a conical form determined by the shape of its skeleton (Fig. 
12?), its narrower end being turned upwards. Dorsally, ven- 
trally, and on the sides, it is supported by the rigid frame¬ 
work afforded by the thoracic vertebrae, the breast-bone, and 
the ribs. Between and over these lie muscles, and the 
whole is covered in, air-tight, by the skin externally, and the 
parietal layers of the pleurae inside. Above, its aperture is 
closed by muscles and by various organs passing between the 
thorax and the neck; and below it is bounded by the dia¬ 
phragm, which forms a movable bottom to the, otherwise, 
tolerably rigid box. In inspiration this box is increased in 
all its diameters—dorso-ventrally, laterally, and from above 
down. 







THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


387 


The Vertical Enlargement of the Thorax. This is 
brought about by the contraction of the diaphragm which 
(Figs. 1 and 128) is a thin muscular sheet, with a fibrous 
membrane, serving as a. tendon, in. its centre. In rest, the 
diaphragm is dome-shaped,dts concavity being turned towards 
the abdomen. Frpm, the tendon on the crown of the dome 
striped muscular fibres radiate, downwards and outwards, to 
all sides; and are fixed by their inferior ends to the lower 
ribs, the breast-bone, and the vertebral column. In expiration 
the lower lateral portions of the diaphragm lie close against 
the chest-walls, no lung intervening between them. In in¬ 
spiration the muscular fibres, shortening, flatten the dome 



Fig 127.—The skeleton of the thorax, a , g, vertebral column; b, first rib; c, 
clavicle; d. bird rib; i , glenoid fossa. 

and enlarge the thoracic cavity at the expense of the ab¬ 
dominal; and at the same time its lateral portions are pulled 
away from the chest-walls, leaving a space into which the 
lower ends of the lungs expand. The contraction of the 
diaphragm thus increases greatly the size of the thorax cham¬ 
ber by adding to its lowest and widest part. 

The Dorso-Ventral Enlargement of the Thorax. The 
ribs on the whole slope downwards from the vertebral 
column to the breast-bone, the slope being most marked 
in the lower ones. During inspiration the breast-bone 




388 


THE HUMAN BODY 


and the sternal ends of the ribs attached to it are raised, 
and so the distance between the sternum and the vertebral 



column is increased. That this must be so will readily be 
seen on considering the diagram Fig. 129, where ab repre¬ 
sents the vertebral column, c and d two 
ribs, and st the sternum. The continu¬ 
ous lines represent the natural position 
of the ribs at rest in expiration, and the 
dotted lines the position in inspiration. 
It is clear that when their lower ends 
are raised, so as to make the bars lie in 
a more horizontal plane, the sternum is 
pushed away from the spine, and so the 
chest cavity is increased dorso-ventrally. 
The inspiratory elevation of the ribs is 

Fir. 129.—Diagram illus- . , 1 , ,, ,. - ,, 7 

trating the dorso-ventrai mainly due to the action oi the scalene 

increase in the diameter of , , 7 . , , 7 7 rn1 

the thorax when the ribs and external intercostal muscles. The 
scalene muscles, three on each side, arise 
from the cervical vertebras, and are inserted into the upper 
ribs. The external intercostals (Fig. 113, A) lie between the 
ribs and extend from the vertebral column to the costal carti¬ 
lages; their fibres slope downwards and forwards. During 
an inspiration the scalenes contract and fix the upper ribs 
firmly; then the external intercostals shorten and each raises 
the rib below it. The muscle, in fact, tends to pull together 
the pair of ribs between which it lies, but as the upper one of 
these is held tight by the scalenes and other muscles above, 










THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


389 


the result is that the lower rib is pulled up, and not the upper 
down. In this way the lower ribs are raised much more than 
the upper, for the whole external intercostal muscles on each 
side may be regarded as one great muscle with many bellies, 
each belly separated from the next by a tendon, represented 
by the rib. When the whole muscular sheet is fixed above 
and contracts, it is clear that its lower end will be raised more 
than any intermediate point, since there is a greater length 
of contracting muscle above it. The elevation of the ribs 
tends to diminish the vertical diameter of the chest; this is 



Fig. 130 — Portions of four ribs of a dog with the muscles between them, a, a, 
ventral ends of the riOs, joining at c the rib cartilages, 6, which are fixed to carti¬ 
laginous portions, d. of the sternum. A. external intercostal muscle, ceasing be¬ 
tween the rib cartilages, where the internal intercostal, B. is seen. Between the 
middle two ribs the external intercostal muscle has been dissected away, so as to 
display the internal which was covered by it. 

more than compensated for by the simultaneous descent of 
the diaphragm. 

The Lateral Enlargement of the Chest is mainly due to 
the diaphragm, which, when it contracts, adds to the lowest 
and widest part of the conical chest cavity. Some small 
widening is, however, brought about by a rotation of some of 
the middle ribs which, as they are raised, roll round a little 
at their vertebral articulations and twist their cartilages. 
Each rib is curved and, if the bones be examined in their 
natural position in a skeleton, it will be seen that the most 






390 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


curved part lies below the level of a straight line drawn from 
the vertebral to the sternal attachment of the bone. By the 
rotation of the rib, during inspiration, this curved part is 
raised and turned out, and the chest widened. The mech¬ 
anism can be understood by clasping the hands opposite the- 
lower end of the sternum and a few inches in front of it, 
with the elbows bent and pointing downwards. Each arm 
will then answer, in an exaggerated way, to a curved rib, and 
the clasped hands to the breast-bone. If the hands be sim¬ 
ply raised a few inches by movement at the shoulder-joints 
only, they will be separated farther from the front of the 
Body, and rib elevation and the consequent dorso-ventral en¬ 
largement of the cavity surrounded will be represented. But 
if, simultaneously, the arms be rotated at the shoulder-joints 
so as to raise the elbows and turn them out a little, it will be 
seen that the space surrounded by the two arms is consider¬ 
ably increased from side to side, as the chest cavity is in in¬ 
spiration by the similar elevation of the most curved part or 
“ angle ” of the middle ribs. 

Expiration. To produce an inspiration requires consid¬ 
erable muscular effort. The ribs and sternum have to be 
raised; the elastic rib cartilages bent and somewhat twisted; 
the abdominal viscera pushed down; and the abdominal wall 
pushed out to make room for them. In expiration, on the 
contrary, but little, if any, muscular effort is needed. As 
soon as the muscles which have raised the ribs and sternum 
relax, these tend to return to their natural unconstrained 
position, and the rib cartilages, also, to untwist themselves 
and bring the ribs back to their position of rest; the elastic 
abdominal wall presses the contained viscera against the 
under side of the diaphragm, and pushes that up again as 
soon as its muscula: fibres cease contracting. By these means 
the chest cavity is .*estored to its original capacity and the 
air sent out of the lungs, rather by the elasticity of the parts 
which were stretched or twisted in inspiration, than by any 
special expiratory muscles. 

Forced Respiration. When a very deep breath is drawn 
or expelled, or when there is some impediment to the entry 
or exit of the air, a great many muscles take part in produc¬ 
ing the respiratory movements; and expiration then becomes, 
in part, an actively muscular act. The main expiratory mus¬ 
cles are the internal intercostals which lie beneath the exter- 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


391 


nal between each pair of ribs (Fig. 130 B), and have an oppo¬ 
site direction, their fibres running upwards and forwards. In 
forced expiration the lower ribs are fixed or pulled down by 
muscles running in the abdominal wall from the pelvis to 
them and to the breast-bone. The internal intercostals, con¬ 
tracting, pull down the upper ribs and the sternum, and so 
diminish the thoracic cavity dorso-ventrally. At the same 
time, the contracted abdominal muscles press the walls of 
that cavity against the viscera within it, and pushing these 
up forcibly against the diaphragm make it very convex 
towards the chest, and so diminish the latter in its vertical 
diameter. In very violent expiration many other muscles 
may co-operate, tending to fix points on which those muscles 
which can directly diminish the thoracic cavity, pull. In 
violent inspiration, also, many extra muscles are called into 
play. The neck is held rigid to give the scalenes a firm at¬ 
tachment; the shoulder-joint is held fixed and muscles going 
from it to the chest-wall, and commonly serving to move the 
arm, are then used to elevate the ribs; the head is held firm 
on the vertebral column by the muscles going between the 
two, and then other muscles, which pass from the collar-bone 
and sternum to the skull, are used to pull up the former. 
The muscles which are thus called into play in labored but 
not in quiet breathing are called extraordinary muscles of 
respiration. 

The Respiratory Sounds. The entry and exit of air 
are accompanied by respiratory sounds or murmurs , which 
can be heard on applying the ear to the chest wall. The 
character of these sounds is different and characteristic over 
the trachea, the larger bronchial tubes, and portions of lung 
from which large bronchial tubes are absent. They are vari¬ 
ously modified in pulmonary affections, and hence the value 
of auscultation of the lungs in assisting the physician to 
form a diagnosis. 

The Capacity of the Lungs. Since the chest cavity 
never even approximately collapses, the lungs are never com¬ 
pletely emptied of air: the space they have to occupy is 
larger in inspiration than during expiration, but is always 
considerable, so that after a forced expiration they still con¬ 
tain a large amount of air which can only be expelled from 
them by opening the pleural cavities; then they entirely col¬ 
lapse, just as the bag in Fig. 125 would if the bottle inclosing 


392 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


it were broken. The capacity of the chest, and therefore of 
the lungs, varies much in different individuals, but in a man 
of medium height there remain in the lungs after the most 
violent possible expiration, about 1G40 cub. cent. (100 cub. 
inches) of air, called the residual air. After an ordinary 
expiration there will be in addition to this about as much 
more supplemental air; the residual and supplemental to¬ 
gether forming the stationary air, which remains in the 
chest during quiet breathing. In an ordinary inspiration 500 
cub. cent. (30 cub. inches) of tidal air are taken in, and 
about the same amount is expelled in natural expiration. 
By a forced inspiration about 1600 cub. cent. (98 cub. inches) 
of complemental air can be added to the tidal air. After a 
forced inspiration therefore the chest will contain 1640 -J- 
1640 500 -f- 1600 = 5380 cubic centimeters (328 cubic 

inches) of air. The amount which can be taken in by the 
most violent possible inspiration after the strongest possible 
expiration, that is, the supplemental, tidal, and complemental 
air together, is known as the vital capacity. For a healthy 
man 1.7 meters (5 feet 8 inches) high it is about 3700 cub. 
cent. (225 cub. inches) and increases 60 cub. cent, for each 
additional centimeter of stature; or about 9 cubic inches for 
each inch of height. 

The Quantity of Air Breathed Daily. Knowing the 
quantity of air taken in at each breath and expelled again 
(after more or less thorough admixture with the stationary air) 
we have only to know, in addition, the rate at which the 
breathing movements occur, to be able to calculate how 
much air passes through the lungs in twenty-four hours. 
The average number of respirations in a minute is found by 
counting on persons sitting quietly, and not knowing that 
their breathing rate is under observation, to be fifteen in a 
minute. In each respiration half a liter (30 cubic inches) of 
air is concerned; therefore 0.5 X 15 X 60 x 24 = 10,800 
liters (375 cubic feet) is the quantity of air breathed under 
ordinary circumstances by each person in a day. 

Hygienic Remarks. Since the diaphragm when it con¬ 
tracts pushes down the abdominal viscera beneath it, these 
have to make room for themselves by pushing out the soft 
front of the abdomen which, accordingly, protrudes when the 
diaphragm descends. Hence breathing by the diaphragm, 
being indicated on the exterior by movements of the abdo- 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


393 


men, is often called “ abdominal respiration,” as distinguished 
from breathing by the ribs, called “ costal ” or “ chest breath¬ 
ing.” In both sexes the diaphragmatic breathing is the 
most important, but, as a rule, men and children use the ribs 
less than adult women. Since both abdomen and chest alter¬ 
nately expand and contract in healthy breathing, anything 
which impedes their free movement is to be avoided; and the 
tight lacing which used to be thought elegant a few years 
back, and is still indulged in by some who think a distorted 
form beautiful, seriously impedes one of the most important 
functions of the Body, leading, if nothing worse, to shortness 
of breath and an incapacity for muscular exertion. In ex¬ 
treme cases of tight lacing some organs are often directly 
injured, weals of fibrous tissue being, for example, not unfre- 
quently found developed on the liver, from the pressure of 
the lower ribs forced against it by a tight corset. 

The Aspiration of the Thorax. As already pointed out, 
the external air cannot press directly upon the contents of 
the thoracic cavity, on account of the rigid framework which 
supports its walls; it still, however, presses on them indi¬ 
rectly through the lungs. Pushing on the interior of these 
with a pressure equal to that exerted on the same area by a 
column of mercury 760 mm. (30 inches) high, it distends 
them and forces them against the inside of the chest-walls, 
the heart, the great thoracic blood-vessels, the thoracic-duct, 
and the other contents of the chest-cavity. This pressure is 
not equal to that of the external air, since some of the total 
air-pressure on the inside of the lungs is used up in overcom¬ 
ing their elasticity, and it is only the residue which pushes 
them against the things outside them. In expiration this 
residue is equal to that exerted by a column of mercury 754 
mm. (29.8 inches) high. On most parts of the Body the at¬ 
mospheric pressure acts, however, with full force. Pressing 
on a limb it pushes the skin against the soft parts beneath, 
and these compress the blood and lymph vessels among them; 
and the yielding abdominal walls do not, like the rigid tho¬ 
racic walls, carry the atmospheric pressure themselves, but 
transmit it to the contents of the cavity. It thus comes to 
pass that the blood and lymph in most parts of the Body are 
under a higher atmospheric pressure than they are exposed 
to in the chest, and consequently these liquids tend to flow 
into the thorax, until the extra distention of the vessels in 


394 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


whicli they there accumulate compensates for the less exter¬ 
nal pressure to which those vessels are exposed. An equilib¬ 
rium would thus very soon be brought about were it not for 
the respiratory movements, in consequence of which the 
intra-thoracic pressure is alternately increased and dimin¬ 
ished, and the thorax comes to act as a sort of suction-pump 
on the contents of the vessels of the Body outside it; thus 
the respiratory movements influence the circulation of the 
blood and the flow of the lymph. 

Influence of the Respiratory Movements upon the Cir¬ 
culation. Suppose the chest in a condition of normal expira¬ 
tion and the external pressure on the blood in the blood-ves¬ 
sels within it and in the heart, to have come, in the manner 
pointed out in the last paragraph, into equilibrium with the 
atmospheric pressure exerted on the blood-vessels of the neck 
and abdomen. If an inspiration now occurs, the chest cavity 
being enlarged the pressure on all of its contents will be di¬ 
minished. In consequence, air enters the lungs from the 
windpipe, and blood enters the venae cavae and the right au¬ 
ricle of the heart. Thus not only the lungs, but the right 
side of the heart, and the intra-thoracic portions of the sys¬ 
temic veins leading to it, are expanded during an inspiration; 
but the lungs being much the most distensible take far the 
greatest part in filling up the increased space. The left side 
of the heart is not much influenced as it is filled from the 
pulmonary veins; and the whole vessels of the lesser circula¬ 
tion lying within the chest, and being all affected in the 
same way at the same time, the blood-flow in them is not di¬ 
rectly influenced by the aspiration of the thorax. Distention 
of the lungs seems, however, to diminish the capacity of their 
vessels, and so to a certain extent the flow is influenced; as 
the lungs expand blood is forced out of their vessels into the 
left auricle, and when they again contract their vessels fill 
up from the right ventricle. The pressure on the thoracic 
aorta being diminished in inspiration, blood tends to flow back 
into it from the abdominal portion of the vessel, but cannot 
enter the heart on account of the semilunar valves; and the 
back-flow does not in any case equal the onflow due to the 
beat of the heart; so what happens in the aorta is but a 
slight slowing of the current. The general result of all this 
is that the circulation is considerably assisted. When the 
next expiration occurs, and the pressure in the thorax again 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


395 


rises, air and blood both tend to be expelled from the cavity. 
The aorta thus regains what it lost during inspiration; the 
pressure on it is increased and it empties itself faster into its 
abdominal portion. The semilunar valves having prevented 
any regurgitation into the heart, there is neither gain nor 
loss so far as it is concerned. With the systemic intra-tho- 
racic veins, however, this is not the case; the extra blood en¬ 
tering them has already in great part gone on beyond the 
tricuspid valve, and cannot flow back during expiration; and 
the pressure in the auricle being constantly kept low by its 
emptying into the ventricle, the increased pressure on the 
venae cavae tends rather to send blood on into the heart, than 
back into the extra-thoracic veins. Moreover, whatever 
blood tends to take the latter course cannot do it effectually 
since, although the venae cavae themselves contain no valves, 
the more distant veins which open into them do. Conse¬ 
quently, whatever extra blood has, to use the common phrase, 
been “ sucked” into the intra-thoracic venae cavae in inspira¬ 
tion and has not been sent already on into the right ventricle 
before expiration occurs, is, on account of the venous valves, 
imprisoned in the cavae under an increased pressure during 
expiration; and this tends to make it flow faster into the au¬ 
ricle during the diastole of the latter. How much the alter¬ 
nating respiratory movements assist the venous flow is shown 
by the dilation of the veins of the head and neck which oc¬ 
curs when a person is holding his breath; and the blackness 
for the face, from distention of the veins and stagnation of 
the capillary flow, which occurs during a prolonged fit of 
coughing, which is a series of expiratory efforts without any 
inspirations. 

On the whole the influence of the respiratory movements 
on the blood-flow is such as to favor it in inspiration and to 
impede it during expiration. This influence very often shows 
itself on tracings of arterial pressure taken as described in 
Chap. XVIII. Such tracings usually show in addition to the 
pulse waves, slower and greater rises and falls of pressure 
which have the same rhythm as the respiration. In general, 
the rise of pressure in these respiratory waves of blood-pres¬ 
sure is synchronous with inspiration and the fall with expira¬ 
tion, but not exactly. The changes manifest themselves on 
the blood-pressure curve a little later than the commencement 
of the thoracic movement which leads to them; the rise be- 


396 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ginning a little after the beginning of inspiration, the fall a 
little later than the commencement of expiration. 

In still another way the aspiration of the thorax assists 
the heart. The heart and lungs are both distensible, though 
in different degrees, and each is stretched in the chest some¬ 
what beyond its natural size; the one by the atmospheric 
pressure directly, the other by that pressure indirectly ex¬ 
erted through the blood exposed to it in the extra-thoracic 
veins. Supposing, therefore, the heart suddenly to shrink, it 
would leave more space in the chest to be filled by the lungs; 
these must accordingly, at each cardiac systole, expand a lit¬ 
tle to fill the extra room, just as they do when the space 
around them is otherwise enlarged, as during an inspiration. 
The elasticity of the lungs, however, causes them to resist 
this distention and oppose the cardiac systole. The matter 
may be made clear by an arrangement like that in Fig. 131. 
A is an air-tight vessel with a tube, e , provided with a stop¬ 
cock, leading from it; b is a highly distensible elastic bag in 
free communication through d with the 
exterior; and c, representing the heart, 
is a less extensible sac, from which a 
tube leads and dips under water in the 
vessel B. If air be pumped out through 
e both bags will dilate, b filling with air, 
and c with water driven up by atmos¬ 
pheric pressure. Ultimately, if suffi¬ 
ciently extensible, they would fill the 
whole space, the thinner-walled, b , occu¬ 
pying most of it. If then the stop-cock 
Fro. i 3 i.—D iagram ii- be closed, things will remain in equilib- 
aspiritioM 'ot rium, each bag striving to collapse and 

blood 6 circulation of the so exerting a pull on the other, for if b 
shrinks c must expand and vice versa. 
If c suddenly shrink, as the heart does in its systole, b will 
dilate; but as soon as the systole of c ceases, b will shrink 
again and pull c out to its previous size. In the same way, 
after the cardiac systole, when the heart-walls relax, the lungs 
pull them out again and dilate the organ. The contracting 
heart thus expends some of its work in overcoming the elas¬ 
ticity of the lungs, which opposes their expansion to fill the 
space left by the smaller heart; but during the diastole of 
the heart this work is utilized to pull out its walls again, and 










THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


397 


draw blood into it. Since the normal heart has muscular 
power, and to spare, for its systole, this arrangement, by 
which some of the work then spent is stored away to assist 
the diastole, which cannot be directly performed by cardiac 
muscles, is of service to it on the whole. It is a physiological 
though not a mechanical advantage; no work power is 
gained, but what there is, is better distributed. 

Influence of the Respiration on the Lymph-Flow. 
During inspiration, when intra-thoracic pressure is lowered, 
lymph is pressed into the thoracic duct from the abdominal 
lymphatics. In expiration, when thoracic pressure rises 
again, the extra lymph cannot flow back on account of the 
valves in the lymphatic vessels, and it is consequently driven 
on to the cervical ending of the thoracic duct. The breath¬ 
ing movements thus pump the lymph on. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 


THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 

Nature of the Problems. The study of the respiratory 
process from a chemical standpoint has for its object to dis¬ 
cover what are, in kind and extent, the interchanges between 
the air in the lungs and the blood in the pulmonary capilla¬ 
ries; and the nature and amount of the corresponding gaseous 
changes between the living tissues, and the blood in the sys¬ 
temic capillaries. Neglecting some oxygen used up otherwise 
than in forming carbon dioxide, and some carbon dioxide elim¬ 
inated by other organs than the lungs, these processes in the 
long-run balance, the blood losing as much carbon dioxide gas 
in the lungs as it gains elsewhere, and gaining as much oxygen 
in the lungs as it loses in the systemic capillaries. To compre¬ 
hend the matter it is necessary to know the physical and chemical 
conditions of these gases in the lungs, in the blood, and in the 
tissues generally; for only so can we understand how it is that 
in different localities of the Body such exactly contrary pro¬ 
cesses occur. So far as the problems connected with the 
external respiration are concerned our knowledge is tolerably 
complete; but as regards the internal respiration, taking 
place all through the Body, much has yet to be learnt;- 
we know that a muscle at work gives more carbon dioxide 
to the blood than one at rest and takes more oxygen from 
it, but how much of the one it gives and of the other it 
takes is only known approximately; as are the conditions 
under which this greater interchange during the activity 
of the muscular tissue is effected: and concerning nearly 
all the other issues we know even less than about muscle. 
In fact, as regards the Body as a whole, it is compara¬ 
tively easy to find how great its gaseous interchanges with 
the air are during work and rest, waking and sleeping, 

398 


THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 


399 


while fasting or digesting, and so on ; but when it comes to 
be decided what organs are concerned in each case in pro¬ 
ducing the greater or less exchange, and how much of the 
whole is due to each of them, the question is one far more 
difficult to settle and still very far from completely answered. 

The Changes Produced in Air by being once Breathed. 
These are fourfold—changes in its temperature, in its mois¬ 
ture, in its chemical composition, and its volume. 

The air taken into the lungs is nearly always cooler than 
that expired, which has a temperature of about 36° C. (97° 
F.). The temperature of a room is usually less than 21° C. 
(70° F.). The warmer the inspired air the less, of course, the 
heat which is lost to the Body in the breathing process; its 
average amount is calculated as about equal to 50 calories in 
twenty-four hours; a calorie being as much heat as will raise 
the temperature of one kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of water one degree 
centigrade (1.8° F.). 

The inspired air always contains more or less water vapor, 
but is rarely saturated; that is, rarely contains so much but it 
can take up more without showing it as mist; the warmer air is, 
the more water vapor it requires to saturate it. The expired 
air is nearly saturated for the temperature at which it leaves 
the Body, as is readily shown by the water deposited when it 
is slightly cooled, as when a mirror is breathed upon; or by 
the clouds seen issuing from the nostrils on a frosty day, 
these being due to the fact that the air, as soon as it is cooled,, 
cannot hold all the water vapor which it took up when 
warmed in the Body. Air, therefore, when breathed once, 
gains water vapor and carries it off from the lungs; the 
actual amount being subject to variation with the tempera¬ 
ture and saturation of the inspired air: the cooler and drier 
that is, the more water will it gain wdien breathed. On an 
average the amount thus carried off in twenty-four hours is 
about 255 grams (9 ounces). To evaporate this water in the 
lungs an amount of heat is required, which disappears for 
this purpose in the Body, to reappear again outside it when 
the water vapor condenses. The amount of heat taken off in 
this way during the day is about 148 calories. The total daily 
loss of heat from the Body through the lungs is therefore 
198 calories, 50 in warming the inspired air and 148 in the 
evaporation of water. 

The most important changes brought about in the 


400 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


breathed $ir are those in its chemical composition. Pure 
air when completely dried consists in each 100 parts of— 

By Volume. By Weight. 


Oxygen.20.8 23 

Nitrogen. 79.2 77 


Ordinary atmospheric air contains in addition 4 volumes 
of carbon dioxide in 10,000, or 0.04 in 100, a quantity which, 
for practical purposes, may be neglected. When breathed 
once, such air gains rather more than 4 volumes in 100 of 
carbon dioxide, and loses rather more than 5 of oxygen. 
More accurately, 100 volumes of expired air after drying give 
98.9 volumes, which consist of— 


Oxygen. . 15 4 

Nitrogen. 79.2 

Carbon dioxide. . 4.3 


The expired air also contains volatile organic substances 
in quantities too minute for chemical analysis, but readily 
detected by the nose upon coming into a close room in which 
a number of persons have been collected. 

Since 10,800 litres (375 cubio feet) of air are breathed in 
twenty-four hours and lose 5.4 per cent of oxygen, the total 
quantity of this gas taken up in the lungs daily is 10,800 X 
5.4 -T- 100 = 583.2 litres (20.4 cubic feet). One litre of 
oxygen measured at 0° C. (32° F.) and under a pressure equal 
to one atmosphere, weighs 1.43 grams, so the total weight of 
oxygen taken up by the lungs daily is 583.2 X 1.43 = 833.9 
grams. Or, using inches and grains as standards, 44.5 cubic 
inches of oxygen at the above temperature and pressure 
weigh almost exactly 16 grains, so the 20.4 cubic feet ab¬ 
sorbed in the lungs daily weigh 20.4 X 1728 — 44.5 X 16 = 
12,818 grains. 

The amount of carbon dioxide excreted from the lungs 
being 4.3 per cent of the volume of the air breathed daily, is 
10,800 X 4 3 - 7 - 100 = 464.4 litres (16.25 cubic feet) measured 
at the normal temperature and pressure. This volume 
weighs 910 grams, or 14,105 grains. 

If the expired air be measured as it leaves the Body its 
bulk will be found greater than that of the inspired air, since 
it not only has water vapor added to it, but is expanded in 
consequence of its higher temperature. If, however, it be 
dried and reduced to the same temperature as the inspired 







THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 


401 


air its volume will be found diminished, since it has lost 5.4 
volumes per cent of oxygen and gained only 4.3 of carbon 
dioxide. In round numbers, 100 volumes of dry inspired air 
at zero, give 99 volumes of dry expired air measured at the 
same temperature and pressure. 

Ventilation. Since at every breath some oxygen is taken 
from the air and some carbon dioxide given to it, were the 
atmosphere around a living man not renewed he would, at 
last, be unable to get from the air the oxygen he required; he 
would die of oxygen starvation or be suffocated , as such a 
mode of death is called, as surely, though not quite so fast, as 
if he were put under the receiver of an air-pump and all the 
air around him removed. Hence the necessity of ventilation 
to supply fresh air in place of that breathed, and clearly the 
amount of fresh air requisite must be determined by the 
number of persons collected in a room; the supply which 
would be ample for one person would be insufficient for two. 
Moreover fires, gas, and oil lamps, all use up the oxygen of 
the air and give carbon dioxide to it, and hence calculation 
must be made for them in arranging for the ventilation of a 
building in which they are to be employed. 

In order that air be unwholesome to breathe, it is by no 
means necessary that it have lost so much of its oxygen as to 
make it difficult for the Body to get what it wants of that 
gas. The evil results of insufficient air-supply are rarely, if 
ever, due to that cause even in the worst-ventilated room for, 
as we shall see hereafter, the blood is able to take what 
oxygen it wants from air containing comparatively little of 
that gas. The headache and drowsiness which come on from 
sitting in a badly ventilated room, and the want of energy 
and general ill-health which result from permanently living in 
such, are dependent on a slow poisoning of the Body by the 
reabsorption of the things eliminated from the lungs in 
previous expirations. What these are is not accurately 
known; they doubtless belong to those volatile bodies men¬ 
tioned above, as carried off in minute quantities in each 
breath; since observation shows that the air becomes injuri¬ 
ous long before the amount of carbon dioxide in it is suffi¬ 
cient to do any harm. Breathing air containing one or two 
per cent of that gas produced by ordinary chemical methods 
does no particular injury, but breathing air containing one 
per cent of it produced by respiration is decidedly injurious. 


402 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


because of the other things sent out of the lungs at the same 
time. Carbon dioxide itself, at least in any such percentage 
as is commonly found in a room, is not poisonous, as used to 
be believed, but, since it is tolerably easily estimated in air, 
while the actually injurious substances evolved in breathing 
are not, the purity or foulness of the air in a room is usually 
determined by finding the percentage of carbon dioxide 
in it: it must be borne in mind that to mean much this 
carbon dioxide must have been produced by breathing; the 
amount of it found is in itself no guide to the quantity 
of really important injurious substances present. Of course 
when a great deal of carbon dioxide is present the air is 
irrespirable: as for example sometimes at the bottom of 
wells or brewing-vats. 

In one minute .5 X 15 = 7.5 liters (0.254 cubic feet) of 
air are breathed and this is vitiated with carbon dioxide 
to the extent of rather more than four per cent; mixed 
with three times its volume of external air, it would give 
thirty liters (a little over one cubic foot) vitiated to the 
extent of one per cent, and such air is not respirable for 
any length of time with safety. The result of breathing it 
for an evening is headache and general malaise; of breath¬ 
ing it for weeks or months a lowered tone of the whole Body 
—less power of work, physical or mental, and less power of 
resisting disease; the ill effects may not show themselves at 
once, and may accordingly be overlooked, or considered scien¬ 
tific fancies, by the careless; but they are nevertheless there 
ready to manifest themselves. In order to have air to breathe 
in a fairly pure state every man should get for his own 
allowance at least 23,000 liters of space to begin with 
(about 800 cubic feet) and the arrangements for ventilation 
should, at the very least, renew this at the rate of 30 litres 
(one cubic foot) per minute. The nose is, however, the best 
guide, and it is found that at least five times this supply of 
fresh air is necessary to keep free from odor a small room 
inhabited by one adult. In the more recently constructed 
hospitals, as a result of experience, twice the above minimum 
cubic space is allowed for each bed in a ward, and the re¬ 
placement of the old air at a far more rapid rate is also 
provided for. 

Ventilation does not necessarily imply draughts of cold 
air, as is too often supposed. In warming by indirect radia- 


THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 


403 


tion it may readily be secured by arranging, in addition to 
the registers from which the warmed air reaches the room, 
proper openings at the opposite side, by which the old air 
may pass off to make room for the fresh. An open fire in a 
room will always keep up a current of air through it, and is 
the healthiest, though not the most economical, method of 
warming an apartment. 

Stoves in a room, unless constantly supplied with fresh 
air from without, dry its air to an unwholesome extent. If 
no appliance for providing this supply exists in a room, it 
can usually be got, without a draught, by fixing a board about 
four inches wide under the lower sash and shutting the win¬ 
dow down on it. Fresh air then comes in by the opening 
between the two sashes and in a current directed upwards, 
which gradually diffuses itself over the room without being 
felt as a draught at any one point. In the method of heating 
hy direct radiation, the apparatus employed provides of itself 
no means of drawing fresh air into a room, as the draught up 
the chimney of an open fireplace or of a stove does; and 
therefore special inlet and outlet openings are very necessary. 
Since few doors and windows, fortunately, fit quite tight, 
fresh air gets even into closed rooms, in tolerable abundance 
for one or two inhabitants, if there be outlets for the air 
already in them. 

Changes undergone by the Blood in the Lungs. These 

are the exact reverse of those undergone by the breathed air 
—what the air gains the blood loses, and vice versa . Con¬ 
sequently, the blood loses heat, and water, and carbon dioxide 
in the pulmonary capillaries; and gains oxygen. These 
gains and losses are accompanied by a change of color from 
the dark purple which the blood exhibits in the pulmonary 
artery, to the bright scarlet it possesses in the pulmonary 
veins. 

The dependence of this color change upon the access of 
fresh air to the lungs while the blood is flowing through 
them, can be readily demonstrated. If a rabbit be rendered 
unconscious by chloroform, and its chest be opened, after a 
pair of bellows has been connected with its windpipe, it is 
seen that, so long as the bellows are worked to keep up arti¬ 
ficial respiration, the blood in the right side of the heart (as 
seen through the thin auricle) and that in the pulmonary 
artery, is dark colored, while that in the pulmonary veins 


404 


THE HUMAN BOD Y. 


and the left auricle is bright red. Let, however, the artificial 
respiration be stopped for a few seconds and, consequently, 
the renewal of the air in the lungs (since an animal cannot 
breathe for itself when its chest is opened), and very soon the 
blood returns to the left auricle as dark as it left the right. 
In a very short time symptoms of suffocation show them¬ 
selves and the animal dies, unless the bellows be again set at 
work. 

The Blood Gases. If fresh blood be rapidly exposed to 
as complete a vacuum as can be obtained, it gives off certain 
gases, known as the gases of the blood. These are the same 
in kind, but differ in proportion, in venous and arterial 
blood; there being more carbon dioxide and less oxygen ob¬ 
tainable from the venous blood going to the lungs by the 
pulmonary artery, than from the arterial blood coming back 
to the heart by the pulmonary veins. The gases given off by 
venous and arterial blood, measured under the normal pres¬ 
sure and at the normal temperature, amount to from 58 to 62 
volumes for every 100 volumes of blood, and in the two cases 
are about as follows— 

Venous Blood. Arterial Blood. 

Oxygen. 10 20 

Carbon dioxide. 46 40 

Nitrogen. 2 2 

It is important to bear in mind that while arterial blood 
contains some carbon dioxide that can be removed by the 
air-pump, venous blood also contains some oxygen removable 
in the same way; so that the difference between the two is 
only one of degree. When an animal is killed by suffocation, 
however, the last trace of oxygen which can be yielded up in 
a vacuum disappears from the blood before the heart ceases 
to beat. All the blood of such an animal is what might be 
called suffocation blood, and has a far darker color than 
ordinary venous blood. 

The Cause of the Bright Color of Arterial Blood. The 

color of the blood depends on its red corpuscles, since pure 
blood plasma or blood serum is colorless, or at most a very 
faint straw yellow. Hence the color change which the blood 
experiences in circulating through the lungs must be due to 
some change in its red corpuscles. Now, minute solid bodies 
suspended in a liquid reflect more light when they are more 
dense, other things being equal; and the first thing that sug- 





THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 


405 


gests itself as the cause of the change in color of the blood is 
that its red corpuscles have shrunk in the pulmonary circula¬ 
tion, and so reflect more light and give the blood a brighter 
look. This idea gains some support from the fact that, as 
seen under the microscope, the red blood corpuscles of some 
animals, as the frog, do expand somewhat when exposed to 
carbon dioxide gas and shrink up a little in oxygen. But 
that this is not the chief cause of the color change is readily 
proved. By diluting blood with water the coloring matter of 
the red corpuscles can be made to pass out of them and go 
into solution in the plasma, and it is found that such a 
solution, in which there can be no question as to the reflect¬ 
ing powers of colored solid bodies suspended in it, is brighter 
red when supplied with oxygen than when deprived of that 
gas. This suggests that the coloring matter or haemoglobin 
of the red corpuscles combines with oxygen to form a scarlet 
compound, and when deprived of that gas has a darker and 
more purple color; and other experiments confirm this. 
Haemoglobin combined with oxygen is known as oxyhemo¬ 
globin, and it is on its predominance that the color of arterial 
blood depends. Haemoglobin uncombined with oxygen, 
sometimes named reduced hcemoglobin , predominates in 
venous blood, and is the only kind found in the blood of a 
suffocated mammal. 

The Laws Governing the Absorption of Gases by a 
Liquid. In order to understand the condition of the gases 
in the blood liquid it is necessary to recall the general laws 
in accordance with which liquids absorb gases. They are as 
follows : 

1. A given volume of a liquid at a definite temperature if 
it absorbs any of a gas to which it is exposed, and yet does 
not combine chemically with it, takes up a definite volume 
of the gas. If the gas be compressed the liquid will still, at 
the same temperature, take up the same volume as before, 
but now it takes up a greater weight; and a weight exactly 
as much greater as the pressure is greater, since one volume 
of a gas under any pressure contains exactly twice as much 
of the gas by weight as the same volume under half the pres¬ 
sure; and so on. A liter or a quart of water, for example, 
exposed to the air will dissolve a certain amount of oxygen. 
If the air (and therefore the oxygen in it) be compressed to 
one fourth its bulk then the water will dissolve exactly the 


406 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


same volume of oxygen as before, but this volume of the 
compressed gas will contain exactly four times as much 
oxygen as did the same volume of the gas under the original 
pressure; and if, now, the pressure be again diminished the 
oxygen will be given off exactly in proportion as its pressure 
on the surface of the water decreases. Finally, when a com¬ 
plete vacuum is formed above the surface of the water, it will 
be found that the latter has given off all its dissolved oxygen. 
This law, that the quantity of a gas dissolved by a liquid 
varies directly as the pressure of that gas on the surface of 
the liquid is known as Dalton’s law. 

2. The amount of a gas dissolved by a liquid depends, not 
on the total pressure exerted by all the gases pressing on its 
surface, but on the fraction of the total pressure which is 
exerted by the particular gas in question. For example, the 
average atmospheric pressure is equal to that of a column 
of mercury 760 mm. (30 inches) high. But 100 volumes of 
air contain approximately 80 volumes of nitrogen and 20 of 
oxygen: therefore ^ of the total pressure is due to oxygen 
and f to nitrogen : and the amount of oxygen absorbed by 
water is just the same as if all the nitrogen were removed 
from the air and its total pressure therefore reduced to \ of 
760 mm. (30 inches) of mercury; that is, to 152 mm. (6 inches) 
of mercury pressure. It is only the fraction of the total 
pressure exerted by the oxygen itself which affects the 
quantity absorbed by water at any given temperature. So, 
too, of all the atmospheric pressure f is due to nitrogen, and 
all the oxygen might be removed from the air without affect¬ 
ing the quantity of nitrogen which would be absorbed from 
it by a given volume of water. The atmospheric pressure 
would then be f of 760 mm. of mercury, or 608 mm. (24 
inches), but it would all be due to nitrogen gas—and be 
exactly equal to the fraction of the total pressure due to that 
gas before the oxygen was removed from the air. When 
several gases are mixed together the fraction of the total pres¬ 
sure exerted by each one is known as the partial pressure of 
that gas; and it is this partial pressure which determines the 
amount of each individual gas dissolved by a liquid. If a 
liquid exposed to the air for some time had taken up all the 
oxygen and nitrogen it could at the partial pressures of 
those gases in the air, and were then put in an atmosphere 
in which the oxygen had all been replaced by nitrogen, it 


THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 


407 


would now give off all its oxygen, since, although the total 
gaseous pressure on it was the same, no part of it was any 
longer due to oxygen; and at the same time it would take 
up one fifth more nitrogen, since the whole gaseous pressure 
on its surface was now due to that gas, while before only four 
fifths of the total was exerted by it. If, on the contrary, the 
liquid were exposed to pure hydrogen under a pressure of one 
atmosphere it would give off all its previously dissolved oxygen 
and nitrogen, since none of the pressure on its surface would 
now be due to those gases; and would take up as much 
hydrogen as corresponded to a pressure of that gas equal to 
760 mm. of mercury (30 inches). 

3. A liquid may be such as to combine chemically with a 
gas. Then the amount of the gas absorbed is independent 
of the partial pressure of the gas on the surface of the liquid. 
The quantity absorbed will depend upon how much the 
liquid can combine with. Or, a liquid may partly be com¬ 
posed of things which simply dissolve a gas and partly of 
things which chemically combine with it. Then the amount 
of the gas taken up under a given partial pressure will de¬ 
pend on two things; a certain portion, that merely dissolved, 
will vary with the pressure of the gas in question; but an¬ 
other portion, that chemically combined, will remain the 
same under different pressures. The amount of this second 
portion depends only on the amount of the substance in the 
liquid which can chemically combine with it, and is totally 
independent of the partial pressure of the gas. 

4. Bodies are known which chemically combine with 
certain gases when the partial pressure of these is consider¬ 
able, forming compounds which break up, or dissociate , 
liberating the gas, when its partial pressure falls below a 
certain limit. Oxygen forms such a compound with haemo¬ 
globin. 

5. A membrane, moistened by a liquid in which a gas is 
soluble, does not essentially alter the laws of absorption, by 
a liquid on one side of it of a gas present on its other side, 
whether the absorption be due to mere solution or to chem¬ 
ical combinations or to both. 

The Absorption of Oxygen by the Blood. Applying 
the physical and chemical facts stated in the preceding 
paragraph to the blood, we find that the blood contains (1) 
plasma, which simply dissolves oxygen, and (2) hcemoglobin , 


408 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


which combines with it under some partial pressures of that 
gas, but gives it up under lower. 

Blood plasma or, what comes to the same thing, fresh 
serum, exposed to the air, takes up no more oxygen than so 
much water: about 0.56 volumes of the gas for every 100 of 
the liquid, at a temperature of 20° C. At the temperature 
of the Body the volume absorbed would be still less. This 
quantity obeys Dalton’s law. 

If fresh whipped blood be employed, the quantity of oxy¬ 
gen taken up is much greater; this extra quantity must be 
taken up by the red corpuscles (in possessing which whipped 
blood alone differs from blood serum) and it does not obey 
Dalton’s law. If the partial pressure of oxygen on the sur¬ 
face of the whipped blood be doubled, only as much more 
oxygen will be taken up as corresponds to that dissolved in 
the serum; and if the partial pressure of oxygen on its sur¬ 
face be reduced to one half, only a very small amount of 
oxygen (one half of that dissolved by the serum) will be given 
off. All the much larger quantity taken up by the red corpus¬ 
cles will be unaffected and must therefore be chemically com¬ 
bined with something in them. Since 90 per cent of their 
dry weight is haemoglobin, and this body when prepared 
pure is found capable of combining with oxygen, there is 
no doubt that it is the haemoglobin in the circulating blood 
which carries around most of its oxygen. The red corpuscles 
are so many little packages in which oxygen is stowed away. 

The compound formed between oxygen and haemoglobin 
is, however, a very feeble one; the two easily separate, and 
always do so when the oxygen pressure in the liquid or gas 
to which the oxyhaemoglobin is exposed falls below 25 mil¬ 
limeters of mercury. Hence, in an air-pump, the blood only 
gives off some of its small portion of merely dissolved oxygen, 
until the pressure falls to about ^ of an atmosphere, that is 
to =125 mm. (5 inches) of mercury, of which total 
pressure one fifth (25 millimeters or 1 inch) is due to the 
oxygen present. As soon as this limit is passed the haemo¬ 
globin gives up its oxygen with a rush. 

Consequences of the Peculiar Way in which the Oxy¬ 
gen of the Blood is Held. The first, and most important, 
is that the blood can take up far more oxygen in the lungs 
than would otherwise be possible. Since blood serum ex¬ 
posed to pure oxygen takes up only 3 volumes for 100, blood 


THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 


409 


exposed to the air would take up one fifth only of that amount 
at ordinary temperatures, and still less at the temperature of 
the Body, were it not for its haemoglobin. In the lungs even 
less would be taken up, since the air in the air-cells of those 
organs is poorer in oxygen than the external air; and conse¬ 
quently the partial pressure of that gas in it is lower. The 
tidal air taken in at each breath serves merely to renew 
directly the air in the big bronchi; the deeper we examine 
the pulmonary air the less oxygen and more carbon dioxide 
would be found; in the layers farthest from the exterior and 
only renewed by diffusion with the air of the large bronchi, 
it is estimated that the oxygen only exists in such quantity 
that its partial pressure is equal to 130 millimeters of mer¬ 
cury, instead of 152 as in ordinary air. In the second place, 
on account of the way in which haemoglobin combines with 
oxygen, the quantity of that gas taken up by the blood is 
independent of such variations of its partial pressure in the 
atmosphere as we are subjected to in daily life. At the top 
of a high mountain, for example, the atmospheric pressure 
is greatly diminished, but still mountaineers can breath 
freely and get all the oxygen they want; the distress felt for 
a time by persons unused to living in high altitudes is due 
mainly to circulatory disturbances resulting from the low 
atmospheric pressure. So long as the partial pressure of that 
gas in the lung air-cells is above 25 millimeters of mercury, 
the amount of it taken up by the blood depends on how much 
haemoglobin there is in that liquid and not on how much 
oxygen there is in the air. So, too, breathing pure oxygen 
under a pressure of one atmosphere, or air compressed to 
one half or a fourth its normal bulk, does not increase the 
quantity of oxygen absorbed by the blood, apart from the small 
extra quantity dissolved by the plasma. The widespread state¬ 
ments as to the exhilaration caused by breathing pure oxygen 
are erroneous, being founded on experiments made with im¬ 
pure gas. 

The General Oxygen Interchanges in the Blood. Sup¬ 
pose we have a quantity of arterial blood in the aorta. This, 
fresh from the lungs, will have its haemoglobin almost fully 
combined with oxygen and in the state of oxyhaemoglobin. 
In the blood plasma some more oxygen will be dissolved, viz., 
so much as answers to a pressure of that gas equal to 130 
mm. (5.2 inches) of mercury, which is the partial pressure of 


410 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


oxygen in the pulmonary air-cells. This tension of the gas 
in the plasma will be more than sufficient to keep the haemo¬ 
globin from giving off its oxygen. Suppose the blood now 
enters the capillaries of a muscle. In the liquid moistening 
this organ the oxygen tension is almost nil , since the tissue 
elements are steadily taking the gas up from the lymph 
around them. Consequently, through the capillary walls, 
the plasma will give off oxygen until the tension of that gas 
in it falls below 25 millimeters of mercury. Immediately 
some of the oxyhaemoglobin is decomposed, and the oxygen 
liberated is dissolved in the plasma, and from there next 
passed on to the lymph outside; and so the tension in the 
plasma is once more lowered and more oxyhaemoglobin decom¬ 
posed. This goes on so long as the blood is in the capillaries 
of the muscle, or at any rate so long as the muscular fibres 
keep on taking oxygen from the lymph bathing them; if 
they cease to do so of course the tension of that gas in the 
lymph will soon come to equal that in the plasma: the latter 
will therefore cease to yield oxygen to the former; and so 
maintain its tension (by the oxygen received from the last 
decomposed oxyhaemoglobin) at a point which will prevent 
the liberation of any more oxygen from such red corpuscles 
as have not yet given all of theirs up. The blood will now go 
on as ordinary venous blood into the veins of the muscle 
and so back to the lungs. It will consist of (1) plasma with 
oxygen dissolved in it at a tension of about 25 millimeters 
(1 inch) of mercury. (2) A number of red corpuscles con¬ 
taining reduced haemoglobin. (3) A number of red corpus¬ 
cles containing oxyhaemoglobin. Or perhaps all of the red 
corpuscles will contain some reduced and some oxidized 
haemoglobin. The relative proportion of reduced and un¬ 
reduced haemoglobin will depend on how active the muscle 
had been; if it worked while the blood flowed through it, it will 
have used up more oxygen, and the blood leaving it will con¬ 
sequently be more venous, than if it rested. This venous 
blood, returning to the heart, is sent on to the pulmonary 
capillaries. Here, the partial pressure of oxygen in the air- 
cells being 130 mm. (5.2 inches) and that in the blood 
plasma much less, oxygen will be taken up by the latter, and 
the tension of that gas in the plasma tend to be raised above 
the limit at which haemoglobin combines with it. Hence, as 
fast as the plasma gets oxygen those red corpuscles which 


THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 


411 


contain any reduced haemoglobin rob it, and so its oxygen 
tension is kept down below that in the air-cells until all the 
haemoglobin is satisfied. Then the oxygen tension of the 
plasma rises to that of the gas in the air-cells; no more 
oxygen is absorbed, and the blood returns to the left auricle 
of the heart in the same condition, so far as oxygen is con¬ 
cerned, as when we commenced to follow it. 

The Carbon Dioxide of the Blood. The same general 
laws apply to this as to the blood oxygen. The gas is partly 
merely dissolved and partly in a loose chemical combination 
much like that of oxygen with haemoglobin, but the body 
with w r hich it combines probably exists in the plasma more 
than in the red corpuscles; what it may be is not certainly 
known. Besides this, some more carbon dioxide is stably 
combined and is only given off on the addition of a stronger 
acid. The partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the pulmo¬ 
nary air-cells is about 40 mm. (1.6 inches) of mercury. There¬ 
fore the tension of that gas in the pulmonary capillaries 
must be more than this. On the other hand its tension in 
arterial blood must be less than that in the lymph around 
the tissues; otherwise it could not enter the blood in the 
systemic circulation, which it does, as proved by the fact 
that 100 vols. of venous blood give off 46 of this gas, and 100 
vols. of arterial only 40. 

The nitrogen dissolved in the blood is, so far as we know, 
quite unimportant. 

Internal Respiration. As to the amount of oxygen used 
by each tissue and the quantity of carbon dioxide produced 
by it we know but little; the following points seem, however, 
tolerably certain: 

1. The amount of carbon dioxide produced in an organ 
in a given time bears no constant ratio to the amount of 
oxygen taken up by it simultaneously. This is certainly 
true of muscle, for experiment shows that muscular work 
if really severe leads to an elimination of carbon dioxide 
containing more oxygen than the total oxygen taken up from 
the lungs at the jsame time. The balance is of course made 
up in subsequent periods of rest, w T hen more free oxygen is 
taken up than is eliminated in combination during the same 
time. Moreover, a frog’s muscle excised from the body and 
put in an atmosphere containing no oxygen and made there 
to contract, will evolve with each contraction considerable 



412 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


quantities of carbon dioxide—although from the conditions 
of the experiment it can receive from outside no uncombined 
oxygen, and other experiments show that it contains none. 
Hence the living muscular fibre must contain a substance 
which is decomposed during activity and yields carbon 
dioxide as one product of decomposition; and this quite in¬ 
dependent of any simultaneous direct oxidation. 

2. What is true of muscle is probably true of most of the 
tissues. During rest they take up oxygen and fix it in the 
form of complex compounds, bodies which, like nitroglycer¬ 
ine, are readily decomposed into simpler, and in such decom¬ 
positions liberate energy which is used by the working tissue. 
One product of the decomposition is the highly oxidized 
carbon dioxide, and this is eliminated; other products are 
less oxidized, and possibly are not eliminated but built up 
again, with fresh oxygen taken from the blood and fresh 
carbon from the food, into the decomposable substance. 

3. During the day a man gives off from his lungs more 
oxygen in carbon dioxide, than he takes up by the same 
organs from the air. During the night the reverse is the 
case. This, however, has nothing to do with the alternating 
periods of light and darkness, as it has in the case of a green 
plant, which in the light evolves more oxygen than it con¬ 
sumes, and in the dark the contrary. It depends, rather, on 
the fact that during the day more muscular effort is exerted 
than at night, and the meals are then taken and digested. 
The activity of the muscles and the digestive glands is de¬ 
pendent on processes which give rise to a large production of 
carbon dioxide and, during the night, when both are at rest, 
more oxygen is taken up than is contained in the carbon 
dioxide eliminated. If a man works and takes his meals at" 
night, and sleeps in the day, the usual ratios of his gaseous 
exchanges with the exterior are entirely reversed. 

4. The amount of work that a man’s organs do, is not 
dependent on the amount of oxygen supplied to them, but 
the amount of oxygen used by him depends on how much he 
uses his organs. The quantity of oxygen supplied must of 
course always be, at least, that required to' prevent suffoca¬ 
tion; but an excess above this limit will not make the tissues 
work. Just as a man must have a certain amount of food 
to keep him alive, so he must have a certain amount of 
oxygen; but as extra food will not make his tissues or him 


THE CHEMISTRY OF RESPIRATION. 


413 


(who is physiologically the sum of all his tissues) work, 
apart from some stimulus to exertion, so it is with oxygen. 
Highly arterialized blood, or an abnormal amount of blood, 
flowing through an organ will not arouse it to activity; the 
working organ, muscle, or gland, for example, usually gets 
enough more blood to supply its extra needs—just as a healthy 
man who works will have a better appetite than an idle one; 
but as taking more food by an idle man will not of itself 
make him more energetic, so neither will sending more arterial 
blood through an organ excite it to activity. 

5. The preceding statement is confirmed by experiments 
which show that an animal uses no more oxygen in an hour 
when made to breathe that gas in a pure state, than when 
allowed to breathe ordinary air. In other w T ords, the amount 
of oxygen an animal uses (provided it gets the minimum, 
necessary for health) is dependent only on how much it uses: 
its tissues. These (the rest in most cases subject to a certain 
amount of control from the nervous) determine their own 
activity, and this, in turn, how much oxygen shall be used in 
the systemic circulation and restored in the pulmonary. In 
other words, the physiological work of an animal, which of 
course is largely dependent upon how external forces act upon 
it, determines how much oxygen it uses daily; and not the 
supply of oxygen how much its tissue activity shall be, unless 
the supply sinks below the starvation limit. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 


THE NERVOUS FACTORS OF THE RESPIRATORY 
MECHANISM. ASPHYXIA. 

The Respiratory Centre. The respiratory movements 
are to a certain extent under the control of the will; we can 
breathe faster or slower, shallower or more deeply, as we 
wish, and can also “ hold the breath ” for some time—but the 
voluntary control thus exerted is limited in extent; no one 
can commit suicide by holding his breath. In ordinary quiet 
breathing the movements are quite involuntary; they go on 
perfectly without the least attention on our part, and, not 
only in sleep, but during the unconsciousness of fainting or 
of an apoplectic fit. The natural breathing movements are 
therefore either reflex or automatic. 

The muscles concerned in producing the changes in the 
chest which lead to the entry or exit of air are of the ordinary 
striped kind; and these, as we have seen, only contract in the 
Body under the influence of the nerves going to them; the 
nerves of the diaphragm are the two phrenic nerves, one for 
each side of it; the external intercostal muscles are supplied 
by certain branches of the thoracic spinal nerves, called the 
intercostal nerves. If the phrenic nerves be cut the diaphragm 
ceases its contractions, and a similar paralysis of the external 
intercostals follows section of the intercostal nerves. 

Since the inspiratory muscles only act when stimulated 
by nervous impulses reaching them, we have next to seek 
where these impulses originate; and experiment shows that 
it is in the medulla oblongata. All the brain of a cat or a 
rabbit in front of the medulla can be removed, and it will 
still go on breathing; and children are sometimes born with 
the medulla oblongata only, the rest of the brain being un¬ 
developed, and yet they breathe for a time. If, on the 
other hand, the spinal cord be divided immediately below 
the medulla of an animal, all breathing movements of the 

414 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


415 


chest cease at once. We conclude, therefore, that the nerv¬ 
ous impulses calling forth contractions of the respiratory 
muscles arise in the medulla oblongata, and travel down the 
spinal cord and thence out along the phrenic and intercostal 
nerves. This is confirmed by the fact that if the spinal cord 
be cut across below the origin of the fourth pair of cervical 
spinal nerves (from which the phrenics mainly arise) but 
above the first thoracic spinal nerves, the respiratory move¬ 
ments of the diaphragm continue, but those of the intercostal 
muscles cease; this phenomenon has sometimes been observed 
on men so stabbed in the back as to divide the spinal cord in 
the region indicated. Finally, that the nervous impulses ex¬ 
citing the inspiratory muscles originate in the medulla, is 
proved by the fact that if a small portion of that organ, the 
so-called vital point , be destroyed, all the respiratory move¬ 
ments cease at once and forever, although all the rest of the 
brain and spinal cord may be left uninjured. This part of 
the medulla is known as the respiratory centre . The im¬ 
pulses proceeding from it probably do not pass directly to 
the motor nerve-fibres concerned, but first to subsidiary 
centres in the cord, from which properly co-ordinated impulses 
are sent to the muscles concerned. Occasionally in young 
animals, especially after a small dose of strychnia has been 
administered, a few respiratory movements are seen after 
section of the cord high up in the neck. But the broad 
general fact remains, that in the normal working of the Body 
the spinal respiratory centres only send out respiration-caus¬ 
ing impulses when excited by impulses descending to them 
from the main respiratory centre in the medulla. 

In the above statements, attention has been chiefly con¬ 
fined to the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles; but 
what is said of them is true of the respiratory innervation of 
all other breathing muscles, whether expiratory or inspira¬ 
tory, normal or extraordinary. 

Is the Respiratory Centre Reflex? Since this centre 
goes on working independently of the will, we have next to 
inquire is it a reflex centre or not ? are the efferent discharges 
it sends along the respiratory nerves due to afferent impulses 
reaching it by centripetal nerve-fibres? or does it originate 
efferent nervous impulses independently of excitation through 
afferent nerves ? 

We know, in the first place, that the respiratory centre is 


416 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


largely under reflex control; a dash of cold water on the 
skin, the irritation of the nasal mucous membrane by snuff, 
or of the larynx by a foreign body, will each cause a modifi¬ 
cation in the respiratory movements—a long indrawn breath, 
a sneeze, or a cough. But, although thus very subject to 
influences reaching it by afferent nerves, the respiratory 
centre seems essentially independent of such. In many ani¬ 
mals, as rabbits (and in some men), marked breathing move¬ 
ments take place in the nostrils, which dilate during inspira¬ 
tion; and when the spinal cord of a rabbit is cut close to the 
medulla, thus cutting off all afferent nervous impulses to the 
respiratory centre except such as may reach it through cranial 
nerves, the respiratory movements of the nostrils still con¬ 
tinue until death. The movements of the ribs and dia¬ 
phragm of course cease, and so the animal dies very soon 
unless artificial respiration be maintained. Moreover, if 
after cutting the spinal cord as above described, the chief 
sensory cranial nerves be divided, so as to cut off the respira¬ 
tory centre from almost all possible afferent nervous im¬ 
pulses, the regular breathing movements of the nostrils con¬ 
tinue. It is, therefore, nearly certain that the activity of the 
respiratory centre, however much it may be capable of modi¬ 
fication through sensory nerves, is essentially independent of 
them; in other words the normal respiratory movements are 
not reflex. 

What it is that Excites the Respiratory Centre. The 
thing that, above all others, influences the respiratory centre 
is the greater or less venosity of the blood flowing through it. 
If this blood be very rich in oxygen and comparatively poor 
in carbon dioxide the respiratory centre acts but feebly, and 
the respirations are shallow. If, on the other hand, this 
blood be highly venous the respiratory movements are more 
rapid than normal, and are forced, the extraordinary muscles 
of respiration being called into play; this state of violent 
labored respiration, due to deficient aeration of the blood is 
called dyspnoea. Normal quiet breathing is eupnma . If 
active artificial respiration be kept up on an animal for a 
short time, it is found, on its cessation, that the creature 
(dog or rabbit) makes no attempt to breathe for a period 
which may extend to one and a half minutes. This breath¬ 
less condition, in which an animal with no hindrance opposed 
to its breathing makes no respiratory movement, is apncea. 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


417 


Apncea used to be ascribed solely to an overloading of the 
blood with oxygen, but the haemoglobin of the blood leaving 
the lungs is normally so nearly saturated with that gas that 
this explanation is not sufficient. The apnoeic state is in 
part due no doubt to the high percentage of oxygen in the 
air-cells of the lungs, brought about by the active artificial 
ventilation. The blood, as it flows through the lungs, is thus 
able to supply itself with oxygen for some time without any 
renewal of the air within them. But even this is not the 
whole matter, for an animal made apnoeic will often continue 
so after its arterial blood has become distinctly venous in 
color; and an animal may, if its pneumogastric nerves be 
intact, be rendered apnoeic for a short time by rapid insuffla¬ 
tion of its lungs with an indifferent gas. In fact, there is 
evidence that distention of the lungs tends to inhibit the 
sending out of impulses to the inspiratory muscles, the 
afferent fibres exerting this inhibitory action on the centre 
taking their course in the pulmonary branches of the pneu¬ 
mogastric; and this inhibition plays a part in the production 
of apnoea. It should be noted that by apncea physicians 
usually mean only extreme dyspnoea. 

How venous blood causes great excitation of the respira¬ 
tory centre is not certainly known. We may make the 
following provisional hypothesis: the chemical changes 
occurring in the respiratory centre produce a substance 
which stimulates its nerve-cells; when the blood is richly 
oxygenated this substance is oxidized as fast as it is formed, 
and the centre is not excited; but when the blood is poor in 
oxygen, the stimulating body accumulates and the respiratory 
discharges become powerful. Under normal circumstances 
the oxygen is not kept up to the point of entirely removing 
this exciting substance, and the centre is stimulated so as to 
produce the natural breathing movements. That the stimu¬ 
lant acts upon the respiratory centre itself, and not upon 
other organs of the Body and through their sensory nerves 
upon the medulla, is proved by experiments which show that 
the circulation of venous blood through the trunk and limbs 
of an animal, while its respiratory centre is supplied with 
arterial blood, does not produce dyspnoea. 

Why are the Respiratory Discharges Rhythmic ? Every 
complete respiratory act consists of an inspiration, an expira¬ 
tion and a pause; and then follows the inspiration of the 


418 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


next act. In natural quiet breathing there is no essential 
difference between the expiration and the pause. The in¬ 
spiration is the only active part; the expiration and the 
pause are dependent on muscular inactivity and, there¬ 
fore, on the cessation of the discharge of nervous impulses 
from the respiratory centre. But then, we may ask, if in 
accordance with the hypothesis made in the last paragraph, 
the respiratory centre is constantly being excited, why is it 
not always discharging ? why does it only send out nervous 
impulses at intervals? This question, which is essentially 
the same as that why the heart beats rhythmically, belongs 
to the higher regions of Physiology and can only at present 
be hypothetically answered. Let us consider, for a moment, 
ordinary mechanical circumstances under which a steady 
supply is turned into an intermittent discharge. Suppose a 
tube closed water-tight below by a hinged bottom, which is 
kept shut by a spring. If a steady stream of. water is poured 
into the tube from above, the water will rise until its weight 
is able to overcome the pressure of the spring, and the bottom 
will then be forced down and some water flow out. The 
spring will then press the bottom up again, and the water 
accumulate until its weight again forces open the bottom of 
the tube, and there is another outrush; and so on. By 
opposing a certain resistance to the exit we could thus turn 
a steady inflow into a rhythmic outflow. Or, take the case 
of a tube with one end immersed in water and a steady 
stream of air blown into its other end. The air will emerge 
from the immersed end, not in a steady current, but in a 
series of bubbles. Its pressure in the tube must rise until 
it is able to overcome the cohesive force of the water, and 
then a bubble bursts forth; after this the air has again to 
get up the requisite pressure in the tube before another 
bubble is ejected; and so the continuous supply is trans¬ 
formed into an intermittent delivery. Physiologists sup¬ 
pose something of the same kind to occur in the respiratory 
centre. Its nerve-cells are always, under usual circum- 
tances, being excited; but, to discharge a nervous impulse 
along the efferent respiratory nerves, they have to overcome 
a certain resistance. The nervous impulses have to accumu¬ 
late, or “ gain a head,” before they travel out from the 
centre, and, after their discharge, time is required to attain 
once more the necessary level of irruption before a fresh in- 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


419 


nervation is sent to the muscles. This method of account¬ 
ing for the respiratory rhythm is known as the “ resistance 
theory.” If not altogether satisfactory it is at least far 
preferable to the older mode of considering the question 
solved by assuming a rhythmic character or property of the 
respiratory centre. It gives a definite hypothesis, which 
accords with what is known of general natural laws outside 
of the Body, and the validity of which can be subjected to 
experiment: and so serves very well to show how scientific 
differs from pre-scientific, or mediaeval, physiology. The 
latter was content with observing things in the Body and 
considered it explained a phenomenon when it gave it a 
name. Now we call a phenomenon explained, when we have 
found to what general category of natural laws it can be 
reduced as a special example; and this reducing a special 
case to a particular manifestation of some one or more 
general properties of matter already known is, of course, all 
that we ever mean when we say we explain anything. We 
explain the fall of an apple and the rise of the tides by 
referring them to the class of general results of the law of 
gravitation; but the why of the law of gravitation we do not 
know at all; it is merely a fact which we have found out. 
So with regard to Physiology; we are working scientifically 
when we try to reduce the activities of the living Body to 
special instances of mechanical, physical, or chemical laws 
otherwise known to us, and unscientifically when we lose 
sight of that aim. Certain vital phenomena, as those of 
blood-pressure, we can thus explain, as much as we can ex¬ 
plain anything; others, as the rhythm of the respiratory 
movements, we can provisionally explain, although not yet 
certain that our explanation is the right one; and still 
others, as the phenomena of consciousness, we cannot explain 
at all, and possibly never shall, by referring them to general 
properties of matter, since they may be associated only with 
that particular kind of matter called protoplasm, and per¬ 
haps only with some varieties of it. 

The Relation of the Pneumogastric Nerves to the Re¬ 
spiratory Centre. We have next to consider if any phenom¬ 
ena presented by the living Body give support to the resist¬ 
ance theory of the respiratory rhythm. A very important 
collateral prop to it is given by the relation of the pneumo¬ 
gastric nerves to the rate and force of the respiratory move- 


429 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ments. These nerves give branches to the larynx, the wind¬ 
pipe, and the lungs, and might therefore be suspected to 
have something to do with breathing. Indeed at one time it 
was maintained that the breathing movements were purely 
reflex, the afferent fibres running in the pneumogastrics 
irom the lungs to the respiratory centre. That the vagi are 
not concerned in influencing the respiratory muscles directly 
is shown by the fact that all of these muscles (except certain 
small ones in the larynx) contract as usual in breathing after 
both pneumogastric nerves have been divided. Still, the 
section of both nerves has a considerable influence on the 
respiratory movements; they become slower and deeper. 
We may understand this by supposing that the resistance to 
the discharges of the respiratory centre is liable to variation. 
It may be increased, and then the discharges will be fewer 
and larger; or diminished, and then they will be more fre¬ 
quent but each one less powerful. If the spring, in the 
illustration used in the preceding paragraph, be made stronger, 
while the inflow of water to the tube remains the same, the 
outflows will be less frequent but each one greater; and vice 
versa. The effect of section of the pneumogastric trunk 
may, therefore, be explained if we suppose that, normally, it 
carries up, from its lung branches, nervous impulses which 
diminish the resistance to the discharges of the respiratory 
centre; when the nerves are cut these helping impulses are 
lost to the centre, and its impulses must gather more head 
before they break out, but will be greater when they do. 
This view is confirmed by the fact that stimulation of the 
central ends of the divided pneumogastrics, if weak, brings 
back the respirations to their normal rate and force; if 
stronger makes them more rapid and shallower; and when 
stronger still, abolishes the respiratory rhythm altogether, 
with the inspiratory muscles in a steady state of feeble con¬ 
traction. That is to say, the resistance to the discharges of 
the centre being entirely taken away (which is equivalent to 
the total removal of the spring in our example), the centre 
sends out uninterrupted and non-rhythmic stimuli to the 
inspiratory muscles. 

The pneumogastric nerve gives two branches to the 
larynx; known respectively as the superior and inferior (re¬ 
current) laryngeal nerves; the action of these on the respira¬ 
tory centre is opposite to that of the fibres from the lungs 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


421 


coming up in the main pneumogastric trunk. If the supe¬ 
rior laryngeal branch be divided and its central end stimu¬ 
lated, the respirations become less frequent but each one 
more powerful; hence this nerve appears to contain fibres 
which increase the resistance to inspiratory discharges from 
the respiratory centre. The same, but to a less degree, is true 
of the inferior laryngeal branch. Both are inhibitory fibres 
so far as inspiration is concerned; whereas the main vagus 
stem when its central end is electrically stimulated is acceler¬ 
ator or augmentor. 

The Expiratory Centre. Hitherto we have considered 
breathing as due to the rhythmically alternating activity and 
rest of an inspiratory centre—and such is the case in normal 
quiet breathing, in which the expirations are passive. But 
in dyspnoea expiration is a muscular act, and so there must 
be a section of the respiratory centre controlling the expira¬ 
tory muscles, and we may regard the whole centre as consist¬ 
ing really of two; an inspiratory and expiratory. The latter 
part of the respiratory centre, however, is less irritable than 
the inspiratory part, and hence when the blood is in a normal 
state of aeration never gets stimulated up to the discharging 
point. In dyspnoea the stimulus becomes sufficient to cause 
it also to discharge, but only after the more irritable inspira¬ 
tory centre; hence the expiration follows the inspiration. 
This alternation of activity is, moreover, promoted by the fact 
that the pneumogastric nerve-fibres coming up from the 
lungs are of two kinds. The predominant sort are the 
accelerator set already referred to, which favor discharge of 
the inspiratory centre, and perhaps also increase the resist¬ 
ance to the expiratory discharge. This set is excited when 
the lungs diminish in bulk, as in expiration; and when the 
whole nerve is stimulated electrically they usually get the 
better of the other set, which carry up to the medulla im¬ 
pulses which inhibit inspiratory discharges. This set is 
stimulated by expansion of the lungs, even in quiet breath¬ 
ing: and they play a part in producing the phenomenon 
of apnoea. When the distention of the lungs is con¬ 
siderable these fibres not only check inspiration but favor 
expiratory movements. Hence, every expansion of the lungs 
(inspiration) tends to promote an expiration, and every col¬ 
lapse of the lungs (expiration) tends to produce an inspira- 


422 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


tion; and so, through the pneumogastric nerves, the respira¬ 
tory mechanism is largely self-regulating. 

Asphyxia. Asphyxia is death from suffocation, or want 
of oxygen by the tissues. It may be brought about in 
various ways; as by strangulation, which prevents the entry 
of air into the lungs; or by exposure in an atmosphere con¬ 
taining no oxygen; or by putting an animal in a vacuum; 
or by making it breathe air containing a gas which has a 
stronger affinity for haemoglobin than oxygen has, and which, 
therefore, turns the oxygen out of the red corpuscles and 
takes its place. The gases which do the latter are very in¬ 
teresting since they serve to prove conclusively that the Body 
can only live by the oxygen carried round by the haemoglobin 
of the red corpuscles; that amount dissolved in the blood 
plasma being insufficient for its needs. Of such gases carbon 
monoxide is the most important and best studied; in the fre¬ 
quent French mode of committing suicide by stopping up all 
the ventilation holes of a room and burning charcoal in it, it 
is poisoning by carbon monoxide which causes death. 

The Relations of Carbon Monoxide to Haemoglobin. 
If aerated whipped blood, or a solution of oxyhyaemoglobin, 
be exposed to a gaseous mixture containing carbon monoxide, 
the liquid will absorb the latter gas and give off oxygen. 
The amount of carbon monoxide taken up will (apart from 
a small amount dissolved in the plasma) be independent of 
the partial pressure of that gas in the gaseous mixture to 
which the blood is exposed; the quantity absorbed depends 
on the quantity of haemoglobin in the liquid, and is replaced 
by an equal volume of oxygen liberated. This equivalence of 
volume, of itself, proves that the phenomenon is due to the 
chemical replacement of oxygen in some compound, by the 
carbon monoxide; for if the carbon monoxide were merely 
dissolved in the liquid in proportion to its partial pressure on 
the surface, it would turn out no oxygen; the quantity of 
dissolved gases held by a liquid being dependent only on the 
partial pressure of each individual gas on its surface, and 
unaffected by that of all others. During the taking up of 
carbon monoxide the blood changes color in a way that can 
be recognized by a practised eye; it becomes cherry-red in¬ 
stead of scarlet. This shows that some new chemical com¬ 
pound has been formed in it; examination with the spectro¬ 
scope confirms this, and shows the color change to be due to 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


423 


the formation of carbon-monoxide haemoglobin which has a 
different color from oxyhaemoglobin. A dilute solution of 
reduced haemoglobin absorbs all the rays of light in one 
region about the green of the solar spectrum, and so pro¬ 
duces there a dark band; a thin layer of the blood of an 
asphyxiated animal does the same. Dilute solution of oxy¬ 
haemoglobin absorbs the rays in two narrow regions of the 
solar spectrum at the confines of the yellow and green, and 
arterial blood does the same. Dilute solution of carbon- 
monoxide haemoglobin, or blood which has been exposed to 
this gas, also absorbs the light in two narrow bands of the 
solar spectrum; but these are a little nearer the blue end of 
the spectrum than the absorption bands of oxyhaemoglobin. 
Pure blood serum saturated with oxygen gas or with carbon 
monoxide does not specially absorb any part of the spectrum; 
therefore the absorptions when haemoglobin is present must 
be due to chemical compounds of those gases with that body. 

Since carbon-monoxide haemoglobin has a bright-red color, 
we find, in the Bodies of persons poisoned by that gas, the 
blood all through the Body cherry-red; the tissues being 
unable to take carbon monoxide from haemoglobin in the 
systemic circulation. Hence the curious fact that, while 
death is really due to asphyxia, the blood is almost the color 
of arterial blood, instead of very dark purple, as in ordinary 
cases of death by suffocation. Experiments with animals 
show that in poisoning by carbon monoxide persistent ex¬ 
posure of the blood to oxygen, by means of artificial respira¬ 
tion, will cause the poisonous gas to be slowly replaced again 
by oxygen; hence if the heart has not yet quite stopped 
beating, artificial respiration, kept up patiently, should be 
employed in the case of poisoning by carbon monoxide unless 
transfusion of blood be possible. 

The Phenomena of Asphyxia. As soon as the oxygen 
in the blood falls below the normal amount the breathing 
becomes hurried and deeper, and the extraordinary muscles 
of respiration are called into activity. The dyspnoea be¬ 
comes more and more marked, and this is especially the case 
with the expirations which, almost or quite passively per¬ 
formed in natural breathing, become violently muscular. At 
last nearly all the muscles in the Body are set at work; the 
rhythmic character of the respiratory acts is lost, and general 
convulsions occur, but, on the whole, the contractions of the 


424 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


expiratory muscles are more violent than those of the inspira¬ 
tory. Thus undue want of oxygen at first merely brings 
about an increased activity of the respiratory centre, and 
especially of its expiratory division which is not excited in 
normal breathing. Then it stimulates other portions (the 
convulsive centre ) of the medulla oblongata also, and gives 
rise to violent and irregular muscular spasms. That the 
convulsions are due to excitation of nerve-centres in the 
medulla (and not, as might be supposed, to poisoning of the 
muscles or of the fore parts of the brain by the extremely 
venous blood) is shown of the facts (1) that they do not 
occur in the trunk of an animal when the spinal cord has 
been divided in the neck so as to cut otf the muscles from 
the medulla; and (2) that they still occur if (the spinal cord 
remaining undivided) all the parts of the brain in front of 
the medulla have been removed. 

The violent excitation of the nerve-centres soon exhausts 
them, and all the more readily since their oxygen supply 
(which they like all other tissues need in order to continue 
their activity) is cut off. The convulsions therefore gradu¬ 
ally cease, and the animal becomes calm again, save for an 
occasional act of breathing when the oxygen want becomes 
so great as to lead to efficient stimulation even of the dying 
respiratory centre: these final movements are inspirations 
and, becoming less and less frequent, at last cease, and the 
animal appears dead. Its heart, however, though gorged 
with extremely dark venous blood still makes some slow 
feeble pulsations. So long as it beats artificial respiration can 
restore the animal, but once the heart has finally stopped 
restoration is impossible. There are thus three distinguish¬ 
able stages in death from asphyxia. (1) The stage of 
dyspnoea. (2) The stage of convulsions. (3) The stage of 
exhaustion; the convulsions having ceased but there being 
from time to time an inspiration. The end of the third 
stage occurs in a mammal about five minutes after the 
oxygen supply has been totally cut off. If the asphyxia be 
due to deficiency, and not absolute want of oxygen, of course 
all the stages take longer. 

Circulatory Changes in Asphyxia. During death by 
suffocation characteristic changes occur, in the working of 
the heart and blood-vessels. The heart at first beats quicker, 
but very soon, before the end of the dyspnceic stage, more 


THE RESPIRATORY MECHANISM. 


425 


slowly, though, at first, more powerfully. This slowing is 
due to the fact that the unusual want of oxygen leads to 
stimulation of the cardio-inhibitory centre in the medulla 
and this, through the pneumogastric nerves, slows the 
heart’s beat. Soon, however, the want of oxygen affects 
the heart itself and it begins to beat more feebly, and also 
more slowly, from exhaustion, until its final stoppage. Dur¬ 
ing the second and third stages the heart and the venae cavae 
become greatly overfilled with blood, because the violent 
muscular contractions facilitate the flow of blood to the 
heart, while its beats become too feeble to send it out again. 
The overfilling is most marked on the right side of the heart 
which receives the venous blood from the Body generally. 

During the first and second stages of asphyxia arterial 
pressure rises in a marked degree. This is due to excita¬ 
tion of the vaso-motor centre by the venous blood, and 
the consequent constriction of the muscular coats of the 
arteries and increase of the peripheral resistance. In the 
third stage the blood-pressure falls very rapidly, because the 
feebly acting heart then fails to keep the arteries tense, even 
although their diminished calibre greatly slows the rate at 
which they empty themselves into the capillaries. 

Another medullary centre unduly excited during asphyxia 
is that from which proceed the nerve-fibres governing those 
muscular fibres of the eye which enlarge the pupil. During 
suffocation* therefore, the pupils become widely dilated. 
At the same time all reflex irritability is lost, and touching 
the eyeball causes no wink; the reflex centres all over the 
Body being rendered, through want of oxygen, incapable of 
activity. The same is true of the higher nerve-centres; un¬ 
consciousness comes on during the convulsive stage, which, 
horrible as it looks, is unattended with suffering. 

Modified Respiratory Movements. Sighing is a deep 
long-drawn inspiration followed by a shorter but correspond¬ 
ingly large expiration. Yawning is similar, but the air is 
mainly taken in by the mouth instead of the nose, and the 
lower jaw is drawn down in a characteristic manner. Hic¬ 
cough depends upon a sudden contraction of the diaphragm, 
while the aperture of the larynx closes; the entering air, 
drawn through the narrowing opening, causes the peculiar 
sound. Coughing consists of a full inspiration followed by a 
violent and rapid expiration, during the first part of which 


426 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the laryngeal opening is kept closed; being afterwards sud¬ 
denly opened, the air issues forth with a rush, tending to 
carry out with it anything lodged in the windpipe or larynx. 
Sneezing is much like coughing, except that, while in a 
cough the isthmus of the fauces is held open and the air 
mainly passes out through the mouth, in sneezing the fauces 
are closed and the blast is driven through the nostrils. It is 
commonly excited by irritation of the nasal mucous mem¬ 
brane, but in many persons a sudden bright light falling into 
the eye will produce a sneeze. Laughing consists of a series 
of short expirations following a single inspiration; the 
larynx is open all the time, and the vocal cords (Chap. 
XXXVII.) are set in vibration. Crying is, physiologically, 
much like laughing and, as we all know, one often passes 
into the other. The accompanying contractions of the face 
muscles giving expression to the countenance are, however, 
different in the two. 

All these modified respiratory acts are essentially reflex 
and they serve to show to what a great extent the discharges 
of the respiratory centre can be modified by afferent nerve 
impulses; but, with the exception of hiccough, they are to a 
certain extent, like natural breathing, under the control of 
the will. Most of them, too, can be imitated more or less 
perfectly by voluntary muscular movements; though a good 
stage sneeze or cough is rare. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 

General Arrangement of the Urinary Organs. These 

-consist of (1) the kidneys, the glands which secrete the 
urine; (2) the ureters or ducts of the kidneys, which carry 
their secretion to (3) the urinary Madder, a reservoir in 
which it accumulates and from which it is expelled from 
time to time through (4) an exit tube, the urethra. The 
general arrangement of these parts, as seen from behind, is 
represented in Fig. 132. The two kidneys, R , lie in the 
dorsal part of the lumbar region of the abdominal cavity, 
one on each side of the middle line. Each is a solid mass, 
with a convex outer and a concave inner border, and its 
upper end a little larger than the lower. From the ab¬ 
dominal aorta. A, a renal artery, Ar, enters the inner border 
of each kidney, to break up within it into finer branches, 
ultimately ending in capillaries. The blood is collected from 
these into the renal veins, Vr, one of which leaves each kid¬ 
ney and opens into the inferior vena cava, Vc. From the 
concave border of each kidney proceeds also the ureter, U, a 
slender tube from 28 to 34 cm. (11 to 13.5 inches) long, 
opening below into the bladder, Vu, on its dorsal aspect, and 
near its lower end. From the bladder proceeds the urethra, 
at Ua. The channel of each ureter passes very obliquely 
through the wall of the bladder to open into it; accordingly 
if the pressure inside the latter organ rises above that of the 
liquid in the ureter, the walls of the oblique passage are 
pressed together and it is closed. Usually the bladder, 
which has a thick coat of unstriped muscular tissue lined by 
a mucous membrane, is relaxed, and the urine flows readily 
into it from the ureters. While urine is collecting, the be¬ 
ginning of the urethra is kept closed, in part at least, by 
bands of elastic tissue around it: some of the muscles which 
surround the commencement of the urethra assist, being kept 
in reflex contraction ; it is found that in a dog the urinary 

427 


428 


7 HE HUMAN BODY. 


bladder can retain liquid under considerably higher pressure 
when the spinal cord is intact than after destruction of its 



Fig. 132 —The renal organs, viewed from behind. B, right kidney; A, aorta; Ar , 
right renal artery;.Fc, inferior vena cava; Vr, right renal vein; {7, right ureter; 
Vu, bladder; La, commencement of urethra. 


lumbar portion. The contraction of these urethra-con¬ 
stricting muscles can be reinforced voluntarily. When some 
amount of urine has accumulated in the bladder, it contracts 















THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 


429 


and presses on its contents; the ureters being closed in the 
way above indicated, the elastic fibres closing the urethral 
exit are overcome, and the urethral muscles simultaneously 
relaxing, the liquid is forced out. 

Naked Eye Structure of the Kidneys. These organs 
have externally a red-brown color, which can be seen through 
the transparent capsule of peritoneum which envelops them. 
When a section is carried through a kidney from its outer to 
its inner border (Fig. 133) it is seen that a deep fissure, the 
hilus , leads into the latter. In the kilns the ureter widens 
out to form the pelvis , D, which breaks up again into a 
number of smaller divisions, the cups or calices. The cut 
surface of the kidney proper is seen to consist of two distinct 
parts; an outer or cortical portion , and an inner or medul¬ 
lary. The medullary portion is less red and more glistening: 
to the eye, is finely striated in a radial direction, and does not 
consist of one continuous mass but of a number of conical 
portions, the pyramids of Malpighi , 2', each of which is 
separated from its neighbors by an inward prolongation, *, of 
the cortical substance: this, however, does not reach to the 
inner end of the pyramid, which projects, as the papilla, into 
a calyx of the ureter. At its outer end each pyramid sepa¬ 
rates into smaller portions, the pyramids of Ferrein , 2", 
separated by thin layers of cortex and gradually spreading 
everywhere into the latter. The cortical substance is redder 
and more granular looking and less shiny than the medullary, 
and forms everywhere the outer layer of the organ next its 
capsule, besides dipping in between the pyramids in the way 
described. 

The renal artery divides in the hilus into branches (5) 
which run into the kidney between the pyramids, giving off 
a few twigs to the latter and ending finally in a much richer 
vascular network in the cortex. The branches of the renal 
vein have a similar course. 

The Minute Structure of the Kidney. The kidneys 
are compound tubular glands, composed essentially of 
branched microscopic uriniferous tubules , lined by epithe¬ 
lium. Each tubule commences at a small opening on a 
papilla and from thence has a very complex course to its 
other extremity: usually about twenty open, side by side, 
on one papilla, where they have a diameter of about 0.125 
mm . ( 2 ±_ inch). Running from this place into the pyramid 


430 


THE HUMAN BODY. 



each tubule divides several times. At first the branches are 
smaller than the main tube; but as soon as they have come 
down to about 0.04 mm. inch) this diminution in size 
ceases, and division continuing while the tubules retain the 
same diameter, the pyramid thus gets, in part, its conical form. 
Ultimately each branch runs out of the pyramid somewhere, 
either from its base or side, into the cortex and there dilates 


Fig. 133.—Section through the right Kidney from its outer to its inner border. 
2, cortex; 5»\ medulla: 2', pyramid of Malpighi; 2", pyramid of Ferrein; 5, small 
branches of the renal artery entering between the py ramids; A, a branch of the 
renal artery; D, the pelvis of the kidney; U, ureter; C, a calyx. 


and is twisted. It then narrows and doubles back into one of 
the pyramids of Ferrein and runs as a straight tube towards 
the papilla, but before reaching it makes a loop (loop of Henle ), 
and turns back again as a straight tube towards the base of 
the pyramid, where it once more enters the cortex, dilates 
and becomes contorted, and then ends in a spherical capsule. 







THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 


431 


containing a tuft of small blood-vessels. Or, followed the 
other way, each tubule commences in the cortex with a 
globular dilatation, the Malpighian capsule . From this it 
continues as a convoluted tubule in the cortex; this passes 
into a pyramid of Ferrein, becomes straight, and runs to near 
a pyramid of Malpighi as the descending limh of a loop of 
Henle. Turning at the loop, it continues as its ascending 
limh , and this passes out again into the cortex and becomes 
the convoluted junctional tubule , which passes as a straight 
collecting tubule into a pyramid of Ferrein, where it joins 
ethers to form an excretory tubule; the excretory tubules 
run into the main pyramid and unite to form the discharging 
tubules which open on the papilla. Throughout its course 
the tubule is lined by a single layer of epithelium cells differ¬ 
ing m character in its different sections: they are flat and 
clear in the capsules, and very granular in both the convo¬ 
luted parts, where their appearance suggests that they are 
not mere lining cells but cells with active work to do; they 
are non-granular and flat in the descending limb of the loop 
of Henle, clear and columnar in most of the ascending, and 
in both are probably only protective; in the collecting and 
discharging tubules they are somewhat cuboidal in form and 
have no active secretory function. All the tubes are bound 
together by a sparse amount of connective tissue and by 
blood-vessels to form the gland. The lymph spaces are large 
and numerous, especially about the convoluted portions of the 
tubules. 

The Blood-flow through the Kidney. The amount of 
blood brought to the kidney is large relatively to the size of 
the organ and enters under a very high pressure almost direct 
from the aorta, and leaves under a very low, into the inferior 
cava (Fig. 132). The final twigs of the renal artery in the 
cortex, giving off a few branches which end in a capillary 
network around the convoluted tubules and in the pyramids, 
are continued as the afferent vessels of Malpighian capsules, 
the walls of which are doubled in before them (Fig. 134); 
there each breaks up into a little knot of capillary vessels 
•called the glomerulus, from which ultimately an efferent vessel 
proceeds. Where the wall of the glomerulus, w, Fig. 134, is 
doubled in before the blood-vessels, its lining cells continue 
as a covering, c, to the latter, closely adhering to the vascular 
walls. A space, A, is left between the epithelial cells of the 


432 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


outside of the capsule and those involuted on the vessels, as 
there would be in the interior of a rubber ball one side of 


which was pushed in so as to nearly meet the other; this 
cleft, into which any liquid transuded from the vessels must 
enter, opens by a narrow neck , d, into the commencement of 
the first contorted part of an uriniferous tubule. The effer¬ 
ent vein, carrying blood away from the glomerulus, breaks 
up into a close capillary network around the neighboriug 



Fig. 134 — Diagram showing a 
kidney glomerulus and the com¬ 
mencement of an uriniferous 
tubule, a, afferent blood-vessel 
pushing in the wall, w, of a Malpi 
ghian capsule and ending in the 
capillary tuft from which the 
vein e issues: c, involuted epithe¬ 
lium covering the vascular tuft; 
for the sake of distinctness it is 
represented as a general wrapping 
for the whole tuft, but in nature 
it forms a close investment 
around each vessel of the glo¬ 
merulus; A , space in capsule into 
which liquid transuded from 
the vessels of the glomerulus 
passes; d . neck of capsule passing 
into commencement of first con¬ 
voluted portion, //. of an urinif¬ 
erous tubule; o, granular epithe¬ 
lial cells; 6, basement mem¬ 
brane. 


tubules of the cortex. From these 
capillaries the blood is collected 
into the renal vein. Most of the 
blood flowing through the kidney 
thus goes through two sets of capil¬ 
laries; one found in the capsules, 
and the second formed by the 
breaking up of their efferent veins. 
The capillary network in the pyra¬ 
mids is much less close than that 
in the cortex, which gives reason to 
suspect that most of the secretory 
work of the kidneys is done in the 
capsules and convoluted tubules. 
The pyramidal blood flows only 
through one set of capillaries, there 
being no glomeruli in the kidney 
medulla. 

The Renal Secretion. The 
amount of this carried off from the 
Body in 24 hours is subject to con¬ 
siderable variation, being especially 
diminished by anything which pro¬ 
motes perspiration, and increased 
by conditions, as cold to the sur¬ 
face, which diminish the skin ex¬ 


cretion. Its average daily quantity varies from 1200 to 1750 
cub. cent. (40 to 60 fluid ounces). The urine is a clear 
amber-colored liquid, of a slightly acid reaction; its specific 
gravity is about 1022, being higher when the total quantity 
excreted is small than when it is greater, since the amount of 
solids dissolved in it remains nearly the same in health; the 
changes in its bulk being dependent mainly on changes in 
the amount of water separated from the blood by the kidneys. 




THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 


433 


Normal urine consists, in 1000 parts, of about 960 water 
and 40 solids. The latter are mainly crystalline nitrogenous 
bodies {urea and uric acid), but small quantities of pigments 
and of non-nitrogenous organic bodies are also present, and a 
considerable quantity of mineral salts. The following table 
gives approximately, in the first column, the average compo¬ 
sition of the urine excreted in twenty-four hours expressed in 
grams; in the second column the same expressed in grains. 
The third column gives the composition of 1000 parts of 
urine. 


Urine in 24 hours. 

1500 grams. 

23,250 grains. 

Water. 

1428.00 

72.00 

22,134.00 

1116.00 

Solids . 


The solids consist of— 

Urea. 

33.00 

0.50 

0.40 

1.00 

10.00 

2.00 

3.00 

7.00 

0.75 

2.50 

11.00 

0.25 

0.20 

511.50 
7.75 
6.20 

15.50 
155.00 

31.00 

46.50 
108 50 

12.00 

38.75 

170.50 
3.80 
3.00 

Uric acid. 

Hippuric acid. 

Kreatinin. 

Pigments and fats. 

Sulphuric acid... 

Phosphoric acid. 

Chlorine. 

Ammonia. 

Potassium. 

Sodium. 

Calcium .. 

Magnesium.. 

71.60 

1110.00 


In 1000 parts. 


952.00 

48.00 


22.00 
0.33 
0.27 
0 67 
6 66 

1.33 
2 0 <> 

4.67 
0.50 

1.67 

7.33 
0.17 
0.13 


47.73 


The urine, however, even in health is subject to consid¬ 
erable variation in composition; not only as regards the 
amount of water in it, but also in respect to its solid con¬ 
stituents; the latter are especially modified by the quantity 
and nature of the food taken. 

The Crystalline Nitrogenous Constituents of the Urine 
are of great interest as they represent the final result of the 
breaking down in the Body of albuminous and gelatinaginous 
substances, whether due to tissue waste or to the destruction 
in the bodily liquids of proteids and albuminoids existing in 
them in solution. Their chemical relationships tend to cast 
some light on the structure of an albumen molecule and on 
the metabolisms it undergoes in the living organism. 
































434 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Urea (N 2 H 4 CO) is the chief nitrogenous waste product 
of the human Body and is related tp the ammonia group, 
being readily converted into ammonium carbonate by hydra¬ 
tion, a change which occurs under the influence of some 
living ferments when stale urine becomes alkaline and ac- 
quires its well-known offensive ammoniacal odor— 

N 2 H 4 C0+2H 2 0 = (NH 4 ) 2 C0 3 . 

On another side urea is allied to the cyanogen group of sub¬ 
stances, being isomeric with ammonium cyanate, which is 
converted into it by simple heating. 

Uric acid (C 5 H 4 N 4 0 3 ) is present in but small quantity in 
normal human urine, but is the chief nitrogenous excretion 
of birds and reptiles. Its molecular structure is more com¬ 
plex than that of urea, and when it is decomposed by various 
methods urea is very frequently one of the products. It is a 
less complete product of proteid degradation than urea. 
Some of its decompositions indicate relations to oxalic acid 
and to amido-acetic acid ( glycin ), and through this latter to 
the ammonias and the fatty acids series. In human urine 
uric acid exists chiefly in the form of salts of potassium and 
sodium; these are less soluble in cold than in warm water, 
and are sometimes deposited as a flocculent precipitate when 
originally clear urine is left to cool. The precipitate dis¬ 
appears on reheating the liquid. 

Hippuric acid (C^HgOJ is scanty in normal human urine 
but abundant in the urine of herbivora. Chemically it is 
related to the aromatic series, being formed when benzoic 
acid and glycin are made to unite with dehydration; and it 
is broken up into those substances when boiled with mineral 
acids. Certain aromatic bodies allied to benzoic acid are 
found in hay and similar foods and account for the large 
amount of hippurates in herbivorous urine. But proteids 
when broken up by putrefaction also yield bodies of the ben¬ 
zoic group, and the hippuric acid of human urine probably 
has its origin in the liberation of benzoic residues in metabolic 
activities of some of the living cells of the Body; these 
residues being then combined with glycin to form hippuric 
acid. That glycin is formed in the Body is shown by the 
fact that benzoic acid given in food reappears in human urine 
as hippuric acid, having been somewhere united to a glycin 
residue. 


THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 


435 


Kreatinin (C 4 II,N,0) is closely allied tokreatin (C 4 H 9 N 3 0 2 ), 
of which it is a simple dehydration product. Kreatin is a 
normal constituent of muscle (0.2-0.3#), being, indeed, most 
conveniently prepared from Liebig's extract; it is also known 
that kreatin introduced into the Body is converted into 
kreatinin; for if given in the food it causes an equivalent 
increase of the kreatinin excreted in the urine. Kreatin 
formed in the muscles has accordingly been supposed to be a 
source of the kreatinin of the urine, but this does not appear 
to be the case, as all kreatinin disappears from the urine 
during starvation. The kreatinin of normal urine probably 
has its source in the kreatin of flesh eaten as food. 

The Urinary Pigments are still very imperfectly known, 
but appear in part to be derived from uro-bilin, which, as we 
have seen (Chap. XXIV), is itself probably a derivative of 
haemoglobin. 

Of the inorganic salts sodium chloride is by far the most 
abundant, but the phosphates deserve notice because the 
acidity of normal fresh urine is dependent on the presence of 
acid sodium phosphate. 

In various diseases abnormal substances are found in the 
urine: the more important are albumens in albuminuria or 
Bright's disease; grape sugar or glucose in diabetes; bile 
salts ; bile pigments. 

The Secretory Actions of Different Parts of an Urinif- 
erous Tubule. —The microscopic structure of the kidneys is 
such as to suggest that in those organs we have to do with 
two essentially distinct secretory apparatuses: one represented 
by the glomeruli, with their capillaries separated only by a 
single layer of flat epithelial cells from the cavity of the 
capsule and especially adapted for filtration and dialysis; the 
other represented by the contorted portions of the tubules, 
w r ith their large granular cells, which clearly have some more 
active part to play than that of a mere passive transudation 
membrane. And we find in the urine substances which like 
the water and mineral salts may easily be accounted for by 
mere physical processes, and others, urea especially, which are 
present in such proportion as must be due to some active 
physiological work of the kidney, whether a merely selective 
activity of its cells or a constructive one. More direct evi¬ 
dence does, in fact, justify us in saying that in general the 
glomeruli are transudation organs, the contorted portions of 


436 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


tlie tubuli secretory organs, while the loops of Henle and the 
collecting and discharging tubules are merely passive channels 
for the gathering and transmission of liquid. Even in the 
glomeruli, however, the renal cells provide something more 
than a merely passive physical membrane for dialysis and 
filtration: to a certain extent they control the passage of 
substances through them; while they are in health no serum 
albumen or paraglobulin passes through them into the urine, 
though egg albumen injected into the blood of a living 
mammal does. But when they are altered in disease or even 
by a temporary stoppage of their blood-supply, then they 
allow the normal blood proteids to transude: if the blood- 
supply of a kidney be cut off for some minutes by clamping 
the renal artery, then the urine secreted for some time after 
the clamp is removed is albuminous. 

The structure of the glomerular epithelium and its rela¬ 
tion to the blood-vessels are such as to make it almost certain 
that when albumen appears in the urine it enters through 
them and not through other parts of the tubule; but in some 
amphibia we get direct evidence of the entry of substances other 
than salts and water into the renal secretion by the path of 
the Malpighian capsules. In amphibia the blood carried to 
the kidney, like that supplying the mammalian liver, has two 
sources, one venous and one arterial; the arterial supply 
comes from the renal arteries, the venous from the veins of 
the leg by the reniportal vein. Both bloods leave the organ 
by the renal veins, but their distribution in it is in great part 
distinct; the arteries supply the glomeruli, the reniportal 
vein the tubules of the cortex, though mixed there with blood 
from the efferent vessels of the glomeruli. In some small 
amphibia it is, in fact, possible to observe the circulation in 
the living kidney and to see that all blood-flow in the glomer¬ 
uli ceases when the renal arteries are tied, though it con¬ 
tinues elsewhere throughout the organ. When sugar or 
peptone is injected into the blood of such an animal those 
substances appear in the urine; but if the renal arteries be pre¬ 
viously tied they do not. It is true that under those circum¬ 
stances all secretion of urine usually ceases, but it may be 
excited by administering certain drugs, and then is found to 
be free from sugar and peptone. Grape-sugar when present 
in the blood of mammals beyond a certain small percentage 
passes out in the urine; and the same is true of peptone: 


THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 


437 


indeed, the absence of peptone (or of all but the merest traces 
of it) from healthy human urine is one of the main reasons 
for believing that peptone absorbed from the alimentary canal 
is converted at once by the lymphoid tissues of the mucous 
membrane into the proper proteids of the blood plasma. 
When sugar appears in the urine either in disease or, as some¬ 
times happens temporarily, in health, after a meal rich in 
starchy substances we have from the results of experiment 
on amphibia reason to believe that its path of excretion is 
through the glomeruli. In hemoglobinuria , a condition in 
which haemoglobin is found in solution in urine (not in blood- 
corpuscles, for in that case it may have come from ruptured 
vessels anywhere in the renal apparatus), the haemoglobin also 
passes out through the Malpighian bodies: for when some 
laky blood (Chap. IV) is injected into the vessels of an animal 
and the secretion of urine at the same time made slow, col¬ 
lections of haemoglobin may be found in the cavities of the 
capsules. While, however, we have evidence that the epithe¬ 
lium of the capsule has a certain selective power and is the 
special seat of transmission of particular, especially abnormal, 
urinary constituents, yet on the whole the glomeruli provide 
a merely physical apparatus. Through them most of the 
bulk of the urine passes out, and, flushing the more active 
portions of the tubules on its course to the pelvis of the kid¬ 
ney, picks up from them the more specific urinary con¬ 
stituents. 

Urea is the most important and most abundant of the 
characteristic ingredients of urine, and it has a very marked 
influence on kidney activity, the injection of some of it into 
blood causing a greatly increased secretion of urine, in which 
the injected urea is quickly passed out. Judging from ex¬ 
periments on amphibia, urea is not excreted or at any rate not 
chiefly excreted by the glomeruli. On tying the renal arte¬ 
ries of one of these animals urinary secretion ceases, there 
being then no blood-pressure in the glomeruli to cause the 
transudation of liquid; but if some urea be now injected 
into the blood the ephithelial cells of other parts of the 
tubules are stimulated to secrete, and urine rich in urea is 
formed; but in these circumstances it cannot come from the 
Malpighian bodies. It would seem then that urea is a special 
stimulant to some cells of the tubules, and that an excess 
of it in the blood can stir them up to its elimination along 


438 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


with some water, quite independently of any formation of 
transudation urine. In mammalia we cannot separate the 
glomerular secretion from the tubular as in amphibia; and 
the diuresis which administration of urea causes in them is 
in part due to increased glomerular activity, as urea dilates 
the kidney vessels and causes more blood flow through the 
glomeruli, which causes the transudation of more water 
through them; but the simultaneous increase of urea is 
almost certainly due to special activity of the other parts of 
the tubules. 

The proteids and albuminoids of food may while within 
the organism have been built up into tissue or may have 
remained in solution in the liquids; but in either case they 
are sooner or later broken up and oxidized, the main final 
products being carbon dioxide, water, and urea. But this 
breaking down may and does occur in many stages and by 
different modes in the various tissues; and there is no doubt 
that most of the intermediate processes in the chemical 
degradation of albuminous compounds take place outside 
the kidneys. It was, however, at one time believed that the 
urea itself was a kidney product : that the penultimate ni¬ 
trogenous products of proteid degradation were brought to 
the kidneys, and that there the final formation of urea took: 
place. But if this were so there could not be less urea in the 
blood leaving the kidneys by their veins than in that brought 
to them by the renal arteries; yet such is the case. And 
further, if urea be made in the kidneys it ought not to 
accumulate in the blood of animals from whom both kidneys 
have been removed, as it is now known to do, though not 
the immediate cause of the symptoms of so-called urcemic 
;poisoning seen in persons with extensive kidney disease. 
So far, then, as urea is concerned the cells of the kidney 
tubules are not its producers; they have a special affinity for 
it and pick it up from the lymph of the kidney, which in 
turn gets it from the blood. The cells then pass it on with 
some water, and no doubt other things, into the tubules 
which they line. That it is the epithelial cells of the 
contorted portions of the tubules which especially exer¬ 
cise this selective power is, so far as urea is concerned, 
a presumption based on their histological characters, but 
there is evidence that these cells hjive a special selective 
power for some other substances circulating in the blood. 


THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 


4S9 


A blue substance known as sodium sulphindogate after in¬ 
jection, in solution, into a vein of an animal is excreted in 
the bile and urine. If the animal be killed during the 
excretion no traces of this body can under normal circum¬ 
stances be detected in any special part of the kidney; it is 
in fact washed away by the urine as fast as the cells pick it 
up and pass it into the tubuli. But if the blood-pressure of 
the animal be made so low (as by cutting the main vaso¬ 
constrictor nerves) as to bring the renal secretion to a stand, 
and the animal be killed some time after injection of the 
indigotate, the glomeruli and most of the tubules are found 
free of the blue, which lies only in the contorted portions, 
just where the cells which gathered it from the circulating 
liquid had passed it out. 

Though the renal epithelium does not make urea it 
has constructive powers as regards some other urinary constit¬ 
uents. As already stated, benzoic acid taken with the food 
leaves the Body as hippuric acid, having been combined 
with glycin. If blood containing benzoic acid and glyein be 
artificially circulated through a perfectly fresh still living 
kidney, the renal vein blood will contain hippuric acid. 
Even if no glycin be provided in the blood injected through 
the renal artery the returning blood will still yield hippuric 
acid. So living kidney cells can not only perform the 
synthesis, with dehydration, necessary to form hippuric acid, 
but can also form and supply the required glycin. The 
process is closely dependent on the vitality of the cells; the 
experiment fails if the organ be not perfectly fresh and unin¬ 
jured, and if the blood supplied be not properly arterialized. 

The Influence of Renal Blood-flow on the Amount of 
Urine Secreted. From the structure of the glomeruli and 
the fact that most of the water of the urine is derived 
from them it is a priori probable that anything tending to 
increase the pressure of blood in them will increase the bulk 
of urine secreted, and anything diminishing that pressure 
decrease the urine. This is confirmed by experiment. The 
kidney is supplied with both vaso-constrictor and vaso-dilator 
nerves which reach it mainly through the solar plexus, 
though both sets come ultimately from the spinal cord. 
When the spinal cord is cut in the neck region of a dog the 
kidney vessels as well as those of the rest of its body dilate 
and blood-pressure everywhere is very low. Under these 


440 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


circumstances the secretion of urine is suppressed. If the 
lower end of the cut cord be stimulated the vessels all over 
the body of the animal contract, and blood-pressure every¬ 
where becomes very high. But the kidney vessels being 
constricted with the rest allow very little blood to enter 
the glomeruli in spite of the high aortic pressure, and little 
or no urine is secreted. If, however, the vasoconstrictor 
nerves of the kidney be cut before the stimulation of the 
cord, we get a dilatation of the kidney vessels with a con¬ 
striction of vessels elsewhere, and abundant blood flows 
through the glomeruli under high pressure : the whole 
kidney swells and abundant urine is formed. When the 
skin vessels contract on exposure to cold, more blood flows 
through internal organs, the kidneys included, and the blood- 
pressure in these is if anything increased, the expansion of 
internal arteries not at the most more than counterbalancing 
the constriction of the cutaneous. Hence the greater secre¬ 
tion of urine in cold weather. Injection of a little water 
into a vein of an animal causes a very transient constriction 
of the kidney vessels followed by a dilatation; and general 
blood-pressure not being at the same time lowered, pressure 
in the renal glomeruli is high and the secretion of urine 
increased. Urea introduced into the blood acts in a similar 
way, but more markedly, so that this substance causes 
diuresis not merely, as we have seen, by stimulating the cells 
of the tubuli, but also by exciting the vaso dilator nerves of 
the glomerular arteries. Solution of sodium acetate or even 
of common salt injected into the veins causes very marked 
local vascular dilatation in the kidney, and hence great flow 
through the organ under high pressure and a marked in¬ 
crease in the quantity of urine excreted. Even if the nerves 
going to the kidney be first cut, the above results follow, 
these salts appearing to act directly on a local renal vaso¬ 
dilator mechanism. They may of course also, like urea, 
directly stimulate the cells of the contorted tubules, but this 
is not proved. The increased secretion of urine after drink¬ 
ing much water is probably produced by the dilution of the 
blood by the liquid absorbed by the alimentary canal, essen¬ 
tially in the same manner as the extra secretion caused by 
direct injection of water into the blood-vessels. That the 
central nervous system may influence the renal secretion is 
well known, fear, for example, stimulating it. Probably 


TEE KIDNEYS AND SKIN 


441 


such influence is mainly due to vaso-motor changes—either 
paralysis of the renal vaso-constrictor nerves or stimulation 
of the vaso-dilator. Such changes would account for the 
phenomenon, and there is no evidence of the existence of 
true secretory nerves acting directly on the cells of the 
organ as certain fibres of the chorda tympani (Chap. XIX) 
do on the cells of the submaxillary gland. 

The Skin, which covers the whole exterior of the Body, 
consists everywhere of two distinct layers ; an outer, the cuti¬ 
cle or epidermis, and a deeper, the dermis, cutis vera, or 
corium. A blister is due to the accumulation of liquid be¬ 
tween these two layers. The hairs and nails are excessively 
developed parts of the epidermis. 

The Epidermis, Fig. 135, consists of cells, arranged in 
many layers, and united by a small amount of cementing 
substance. The deepest layer, d, is composed of elongated 
or columnar cells, set on with their long axes perpendicular 
to the corium beneath. To it succeed several layers of round¬ 
ish cells, b, the deepest of which, prickle cells, are covered by 
minute processes (not indicated in the figure) which do not 
interlock but join end to end so as to leave narrow spaces 
between the cells ; in more external layers the cells become 
more and more flattened in a plane parallel to the surface. 
The outermost epidermic stratum is composed of many layers 
of extremely flattened cells from which the nuclei (conspicu¬ 
ous in the deeper layers) have disappeared. These super¬ 
ficial cells are dead and are constantly being shed from the 
surface of the Body, while their place is taken by new cells, 
formed in the deeper layers, and pushed up to the surface 
and flattened in their progress. The change in the form of 
the cells as they travel outwards is accompanied by chemical 
changes, and they finally constitute a semitransparent dry 
horny stratum, a, distinct from the deeper, more opaque and 
softer Malpighian or mucous layer, b and d, of the epider¬ 
mis. The cells of this latter, m spite of their name, are not 
muceginous; they are soluble in acetic acid; those of the 
horny stratum not. 

The rolls of material which are peeled ofl the skin in the 
“ shampooing ” of the Turkish bath, or by rubbing with a 
rough towel after an ordinary warm bath, are the dead outer 
scales of the horny stratum of the epidermis. 


442 


THE HUMAN BODY, 


In dark races the color of the skin depends mainly on 
minute pigment granules lying in the cells of the deeper part 
of the Malpighian layer. 

No blood or lymphatic vessels enter the epidermis, which 
is entirely nourished by matters derived from the subjacent 



Fig. 135.—A section through the epidermis, somewhat diagrammatic, highly 
magnified. Below is seen a papilla of the dermis, with its artery,/, and veins, gg ; 
a, the horny layer of the epidermis ; 6, the rete mucosum or Malpighian layer; d, 
the layer of columnar epidermic cells in immediate contact with the dermis ; h, the 
duct of a sweat-gland. 

corium. Fine nerve-fibres run into it and end there among 
the cells. 

The Corium, Cutis Vera, or True Skm, Fig. 136, consists 
fundamentally of a close feltwork of elastic and white fibrous 
tissue, which, becoming wider meshed below, passes gradually 
into the subcutaneous areolar tissue (Chap. VIII) which 
attaches the skin loosely to parts beneath. In tanning it is the 






THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN 


443 


cutis vera which is turned into leather, its white fibrous tissue 
forming an insoluble and tough compound with the tannin 
of the oak-bark employed. Wherever there are hairs, bun¬ 
dles of plain muscular tissue are found in the corium ; it 
contains also a close capillary network and numerous lym¬ 
phatics and nerves. In shaving, so long as the razor keeps 
m the epidermis there is no bleeding; but a deeper cut shows 
at once the vascularity of the true skin. 

The outer surface of the corium is almost everywhere 
raised into minute elevations, called the papilla, on which 



Fig. l36.—A section through the skin and subcutaneous areolar tissue. h % 
tiorny stratum, and m, deeper more opaque layer of the epidermis : d. dermis 
passing below into sc, loose areolar tissue, with fat, /, in its meshes ; above, dermic 
papillae are seen, projecting into the epidermis which is moulded on them, a, 
opening of a sweat gland ; gl, the gland itself. 

the epidermis is moulded, so that its deep side presents pits 
corresponding to the projections of the dermis. In Fig. 135 
is show'n a papilla of the corium containing a knot of blood¬ 
vessels, supplied by the small artery, /, and having the blood 
carried off from them by the two little veins, g g. Other 
papillae contain no capillary loops but special organs connected 
with nerve-fibres, and supposed to be concerned in the sense 








444 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


of touch (Chap. XXXV). On the palmar surface of the hand 
the dermic papillae are especially well developed (as they are 
in most parts where the sense of touch is acute) and are fre¬ 
quently compound, or branched at the tip. On the front of 
the hand, they are arranged in rows; the epidermis fills up the 
hollows between the papillae of the same row, but dips down 
between adjacent rows, and thus are produced the finer ridges 
seen on the palms. In many places the corium is also fur¬ 
rowed, as opposite the finger-joints and on the palm. Else¬ 
where such furrows are less marked, but they exist over the 
whole skin. The epidermis closely follows all the hollows, 
and thus they are made visible from the surface. The 
wrinkles of old persons are due to the absorption of subcu¬ 
taneous fat and of other soft parts beneath the skin, which, 
not shrinking itself at the same rate, is thrown into folds. 

Hairs. Each hair is a long filament of epidermis devel¬ 
oped on the top of a special dermic papilla, seated at the 
bottom of a depression reaching down from the skin into the 
tissue beneath, and called the hair-follicle .. The portion of 
a hair buried in the skin is called its root; this is succeeded 
by a stem which, in an uncut hair, tapers off to a point . The 
stem is covered by a single layer of overlapping scales form¬ 
ing the hair-cuticle; the projecting edges of these scales are 
directed towards the top of the hair. Beneath the hair-cuti¬ 
cle comes the cortex, made up of greatly elongated cells 
united to form fibres; and in the centre of the shaft there 
is found, in many hairs, a medulla, made up of more or less 
rounded cells. The color of hair is mainly dependent upon 
pigment granules lying between the fibres of the cortex. 
All hairs contain some air cavities, especially in the medulla. 
They are very abundant in white hairs and cause the white¬ 
ness by reflecting all the incident light, just as a liquid beaten 
into fine foam looks white because of the light reflected from 
the walls of all the little air cavities in it. In dark hairs the 
air cavities are few. 

The hair-follicle (Fig. 137) is a narrow pit of the dermis, 
projecting down into the subcutaneous areolar tissue, and 
lined bv an involution of the epidermis. At the bottom of 
the follicle is a papilla, and the epidermis, turning up over 
this, becomes continuous with the hair. On the papilla epi¬ 
dermic cells multiply rapidly so long as the hair is growing, 
and the whole hair is there made up of roundish cells. As 


THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 


445 



O 


these get pushed up by fresh ones formed beneath them, the 
outermost layer become flat¬ 
tened and form the hair 
cuticle; several succeeding 
layers elongate and form 
the cortex; while, in hairs 
with a medulla, the middle 
cells retain pretty much 
their original form and size. 

Pulled apart by the elongat¬ 
ing cortical cells, these cen¬ 
tral ones then form the 

medulla with its air cavities. Fig. 1137.— Parts of two hairs imbedded 
nil • ,1 in their follicles, a, the skin, which is seen 

1 lie innermost layer Ot the todip down and line the follicle; b. the sub¬ 
orn a™ i* • . xi r? i-i • i^ cutaneous tissue: c, the musclesof the hair- 
epidcimiS lining the follicle, follicle, which by their contraction can 

has its cells projecting, with erect t,,ehair; sebaceous 8 lancl - 
overlapping edges turned downwards. Accordingly these inter¬ 
lock with the upward directed edges of the cells of the hair- 
cuticle; consequently when a hair is pulled out the epidermic 
lining of the follicle is usually brought with it. So long as the 
dermic papilla is left intact a new hair will be formed, but not 
otherwise. Slender bundles of unstriped muscle (c, Fig. 137) 
run from the dermis to the side of the hair-follicles. The latter 
are in most regions obliquely implanted in the skin so that 
the hairs lie down on the surface of the Body, and the mus¬ 
cles are so fixed that when they shorten, they erect the hair 
and cause it to bristle, as may be seen in an angry cat, or 
sometimes in a greatly terrified man. Opening into each hair- 
follicle are usually a couple of sebaceous or oil glands. Hairs are 
found all over the skin except on the palms of the hands and 
the soles of the feet; the back of the last phalanx of the fingers 
and toes, the upper eyelids, and one or two other regions. 

Nails. Each nail is a part of the epidermis, with its 
horny stratum greatly developed. The back part of the nail 
fits behind into a furrow of the dermis and is called its root. 
The visible part consists of a body, fixed to the dermis be¬ 
neath (which forms the bed of the nail ), and of a free edge. 
Near the root is a little area whiter than the rest of the nail 
and called the lunula. The whiteness is due in part to the 
nail being really more opaque there and partly to the fact 
that its bed, which seen through the nail causes its pink 
color, is m this region less vascular. 








446 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The portion of the corium on which the nail is formed 
is called its matrix. Posteriorly this forms a furrow lodging 
the root, and it is by new cells added on there that the nail 
grows in length. The part of the matrix lying beneath the 
body of the nail, and called its bed , is highly vascular and 
raised up into papillae which, except in the region of the 
lunula, are arranged in longitudinal rows, slightly diverging 
as they run towards the tip of the finger or toe. It is by 
new cells formed on its bed and added to its under surface 
that the nail grows in thickness, as it is pushed forward by 
the new growth in length at its root. The free end of a 
nail is therefore its thickest part. If a nail is “ cast ” in 
consequence of an injury, or torn off, a new one is produced, 
provided the matrix is left. 

The Glands of the Skin are of two kinds, the sudo¬ 
riparous or sweat glayids, and the sebaceous or oil glands. 
The former belong to the tubular, the latter to the race¬ 
mose type. The sweat-glands , Fig. 138, lie in the subcu¬ 
taneous tissue, where they form little globular masses com¬ 
posed of a coiled tube. From the coil a duct (sometimes 
double) leads to the surface, being usually 
spirally twisted as it passes through the epi¬ 
dermis. The secreting part of the gland 
consists of a connective-tissue tube, continu¬ 
ous along the duct with the dermis; within 
this is a basement membrane; and the final 
secretory lining consists of several layers of 
gland-cells. A close capillary network inter¬ 
twines with the coils of the gland. Sweat- 
glands are found on all regions of the skin, 
but more closely set in some places, as the 
palms of the hands and on the brow, than 
elsewhere: there are altogether about two 
and a half millions of them opening on the 
surface of the Body. 

The sebaceous glands nearly always open 
into hair-follicles, and are lound wherever 
there are hairs. Each consists of a duct 
opening near the mouth of a hair-follicle 
and branching at its other end: the final 
branches lead into globular secreting saccules, 
which, like the ducts, are lined with epithelium. In the 



Fig. 138.—A sweat 
gland. d horny 
layer of cuticle; c, 
Malpighian layer; b , 
dermis. The coils 
of the gland proper, 
imbedded in the sub¬ 
cutaneous fat, are 
seen below the der¬ 
mis. 



THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN. 


447 


saccules the substance of the cells becomes charged with oil- 
drops, the protoplasm disappearing; and finally the whole 
cell falls to pieces, its detritus constituting the secretion. 
New cells are, meanwhile, formed to take the place of those 
destroyed. Usually two glands are connected with each hair- 
follicle, but there may be three or only one. A pair of seba¬ 
ceous glands are represented on the sides of each of the hair- 
follicles in Fig. 137. 

The Skin Secretions. The skin besides forming a pro¬ 
tective covering and serving as a sense-organ (Chap. XXXV) 
also plays an important part in regulating the temperature of 
the Body, and, as an excretory organ, in carrying oif certain 
waste products. 

The sweat poured out by the sudoriparous glands is a 
transparent colorless liquid, with a peculiar odor, varying in 
different races and, in the same individual, in different regions 
of the Body. Its quantity in twenty-four hours is subject to 
great variations, but usually lies between 700 and 2000 grams 
(10,850 and 31,000 grains). The amount is influenced mainly 
by the surrounding temperature, being greater when this is 
high; but it is also increased by other things tending to 
raise the temperature of the Body, as muscular exercise. 
The sweat may or may not evaporate as fast as it is secreted; 
in the former case it is known as insensible , in the latter as 
sensible 'perspiration. By far the most passes off in the in¬ 
sensible form, drops of sweat only accumulating when the 
secretion is very profuse, or the surrounding atmosphere so 
humid that it does not readily take up more moisture. The 
perspiration is acid, and in 1000 parts contains 990 of water 
to 10 of solids. Among the latter are found urea (1.5 in 
1000), fatty acids, sodium chloride, and other salts. In dis¬ 
eased conditions of the kidneys the urea may be greatly 
increased, the skin supplementing to a certain extent defi¬ 
ciencies- of those organs. 

The Nervous and Circulatory Factors in the Sweat 
Secretion. It used to be believed that an increased flow of 
blood through the skin would suffice of itself to cause in¬ 
creased perspiration; but against this view are the facts that, 
in terror for example, there may be profuse sweating with a 
<;old pallid skin; and that in many febrile states the skin may 
be hot and its vessels full of blood, and yet there may be no 
sweating. 


448 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Direct experiment shows that the secretory activity of 
the sweat-glands is under immediate control of nerve-fibres, 
and is only indirectly dependent on the blood-supply in their 
neighborhood. Stimulating the sciatic nerve of the freshly 
amputated leg of a cat will cause the balls of its feet to 
sweat, although there is no blood flowing through the limb. 
On the other hand, if the sciatic nerve be cut so as to para¬ 
lyze it, in a living animal, the skin arteries dilate and the 
foot gets more blood and becomes warmer; but it does not 
sweat. The siveat-fibres originate in certain sweat-centres in 
the spinal cord, which may either be directly excited by 
blood of a higher temperature than usual flowing through 
them or, reflexly, by warmth acting on the exterior of the 
Body and stimulating the sensory nerves there. Both of 
these agencies commonly also excite the vaso-dilator nerves 
of the sweating part, and so the increased blood-supply goes 
along with the secretion; but the two phenomena are funda¬ 
mentally independent. 

The Sebaceous Secretion. This is oily, semifluid, and 
of a special odor. It contains about 50 per cent of fats (olein 
and palmatin). It lubricates the hairs and usually renders 
them glossy, even in persons who use none of the various 
compounds sold as “ hair-oil.” No doubt, too, it gets spread 
more or less over the skin and makes the cuticle less permea¬ 
ble by water. Water poured on a healthy skin does not wet 
it readily but runs off it, as “ off a duck’s back ” though to a 
less marked degree. 

Hygiene of the Skin. The sebaceous secretion, and the 
solid residue left by evaporating sweat, constantly form a 
solid film over the skin, which must tend to choke the 
mouths of the sweat-glands (the so-called “ pores” of the 
skin) and impede their activity. Hence the value to health 
of keeping the skin clean: a daily bath should be taken by 
every one. Women cannot well wash their hair daily as it 
takes so long to dry, but a man should immerse his head 
when he takes his bath. As a general rule, soap should only 
be used occasionally; it is quite unnecessary for cleanliness, 
except on exposed parts of the Body, if frequent bathing be a 
habit and the skin be well rubbed afterwards until dry. 
Soap nearly always contains an excess of alkali which in itself 
injures some skins, and, besides, is apt to combine chemically 
with the sebaceous secretion and carry it too freely away. 


THE KIDNEYS AND SKIN 


449 


Persons whose skin will not stand soap can find a good sub¬ 
stitute, for washing the hands and face, in a little cornmeal. 
No doubt many folk go about in very good health with very 
little washing; contact with the clothes and other external 
objects keeps its excretions from accumulating on the skin 
to any very great extent. But apart from the duty of per¬ 
sonal cleanliness imposed on man as a social animal in daily 
intercourse with others, the mere fact that the healthy Body 
can manage to get along under unfavorable conditions is no 
reason for exposing it to them. A clogged skin throws more 
work than their fair share on the lungs and kidneys, and the 
evil consequences may be experienced any day when some¬ 
thing else puts another extra strain on them. 

Animals, a considerable portion of whose skin has been 
varnished, die within a few hours. This used to be thought 
due to poisoning by retained ingredients of the sweat. But 
the main cause of death seems to be an excessive radiation 
of heat from the surface of the body, dependent mainly on 
dilatation of the cutaneous vessels caused by the varnish, 
though possibly the retention of some poisonous substance 
usually excreted by the skin may have an influence. The 
bodily temperature falls in consequence of the great loss of 
heat until it reaches the fatal point, about 20° 0. (68° F.) for 
rabbits. If the animal be packed in raw cotton or kept in 
an atmosphere at a temperature of 30° 0. (86° F.) it does not 
die as a consequence of the varnishing, or at least not nearly 
so soon as it would otherwise die. 

Bathing. The general subject of bathing may be consid¬ 
ered here. -One object of it is that above mentioned—to 
cleanse the skin; but it is also useful to strengthen and in¬ 
vigorate the whole frame. For strong healthy persons a cold 
bath is the best, except in extremely severe weather, when the 
temperature of the water should be raised to 15° C. (about 
60° F.), at which it still feels quite cold to the surface. The 
first effect of a cold bath is to contract all the skin-vessels 
and make the surface pallid. This is soon followed by a 
reaction, in which the skin becomes red and congested, and a 
glow of warmth is felt in it. The proper time to come out is 
while this reaction lasts, and after emersion it should be pro¬ 
moted by a good rub. If the stay in the cold water be too 
prolonged the state of reaction passes off, the skin becomes 
cold and pale and the person feels chilly, uncomforta- 


450 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ble, and depressed all day. Then bathing is injurious instead 
of beneficial; it lowers instead of stimulating the activities 
of the Body. How long a stay in the cold water may be 
made with benefit depends greatly on the individual: a vigor¬ 
ous man can bear and set up a healthy reaction after much 
longer immersion than a feeble one; moreover, being used to 
cold bathing renders a longer stay safe, and, of course, the 
temperature of the water has a great influence: water called 
“ cold” may vary wfithin very wide limits of temperature, as 
indicated by the thermometer; and the colder it is the shorter 
is the time which it is wise to remain in it. Persons who in 
the comparatively warm water of Narragansett during the 
summer months stay with benefit and pleasure in the sea, 
have to content themselves with a single plunge on parts of 
the coast where the water is colder. The nature of the w T ater 
has some influence; the salts contained in sea-water stimu¬ 
late the skin-nerves and promote the afterglow. Many per¬ 
sons who cannot stand a simple cold fresh-water bath take 
one with benefit when some salines are previously dissolved 
in the water. The best for this purpose are probably those 
sold in the shops under the name of “ sea-salts.” 

It is perfectly safe to bathe when warm, provided the skin 
is not perspiring profusely, the notion commonly prevalent to 
the contrary notwithstanding. On the other hand, no one 
should enter a cold bath when feeling chilly, or in a depressed 
vital condition. It is not wise to take a bath immediately 
after a meal, since the afterglow tends to draw away too 
much blood from the digestive organs, which are then ac¬ 
tively at work. The best time for a long bath is about three 
hours after breakfast; but for an ordinary daily dip, lasting 
but a short time, there is no better period than on rising and 
while still warm from bed. 

The shower-bath abstracts less heat from the skin than an 
ordinary cold bath and, at the same time, gives it a greater 
stimulus: hence it has certain advantages. 

Persons in feeble health may diminish the shock to the 
system by raising the temperature of the water they bathe in 
up to any point at which it still feels cool to the skin. Bath¬ 
ing in water which feels hot is not advisable: it tends gen¬ 
erally to diminish the vital activity of the Body. Hence warm 
baths should only be taken occasionally and for special pur¬ 
poses, other than mere luxury. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


NUTRITION. 

The Problems of Animal Nutrition. We have in pre¬ 
ceding chapters traced certain materials, consisting of foods 
more or less changed by digestion, into the Body from the 
alimentary canal, and oxygen into it from the lungs. We 
have also detected the elements thus taken into the Body in 
their passage out of it again by lungs, kidneys, and skin; and 
found that for the most part their chemical state was differ¬ 
ent from that in which they entered; the difference being 
expressible in general terms by saying that more oxidized 
forms of matter leave the Body than go into it. We have now 
to consider what happens to each food during the journey 
through the Body: is it changed at all ? is it oxidized ? if so 
where ? what products does its oxidation give rise to ? Is 
the oxidation direct and complete at once, or does it occur in 
successive steps? Has the food been used first to make part 
of a living tissue and is that then oxidized; or has it been 
oxidized without forming part of a living tissue ? if so, 
where? in the blood stream, or outside of it? Finally, if 
the chemical changes undergone in the Body are such as 
to liberate energy, how has this energy been utilized ? to 
maintain the temperature of the Body or to give rise to mus¬ 
cular work, or for other purposes ? This is a long string of 
questions, the answers to many of which Physiology has still 
to seek. 

The Seat of the Oxidations of the Body. According 
to elder views oxidation mainly took place in the blood while 
flowing through the lungs. Those organs were considered a 
sort of furnace in which heat was liberated by blood oxidation, 
and then distributed by the circulation. But if this were so 
the lungs ought to be the hottest parts of the Body, and the 
blood leaving them by the pulmonary veins much hotter than 
that brought to them by the pulmonary artery after it had 
been cooled by warming all the tissues; and neither of these 

451 


452 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


things is true. A small amount of heat is liberated when 
haemoglobin combines with oxygen in the pulmonary capil¬ 
laries, but the affinities thus satisfied are so feeble that the 
energy liberated is trivial in amount when compared with 
that set free when this oxygen subsequently forms stabler com¬ 
pounds elsewhere. There is good reason to believe that 
hardly any of this latter class of oxidations occurs in the 
living circulating blood at all; its cells do, no doubt, use up 
some oxygen and set free some carbon dioxide; but not 
enough to be detected by ordinary methods of analysis. The 
percentage of oxygen liberated in a vacuum by two specimens 
of the blood of an animal, taken one from an artery near the 
heart, and the other from a distant one, are practically the 
same; showing that during the time occupied in flowing two 
or three feet through an artery the blood uses up no appreci¬ 
able quantity of its own oxygen; while in its brief capillary 
transit it almost suddenly loses so much oxygen as to become 
venous. The difference is explained by the fact that the 
blood gives off oxygen gas through the thin capillary walls 
to the surrounding tissues; and in the latter the oxidation 
takes place. As we have already seen, a freshly excised 
muscle deprived of blood can still be made to contract; and for 
some considerable time if it be the muscle of a cold-blooded 
animal. During its contraction it evolves large amounts 
of carbon dioxide, although the resting fresh muscle contains 
hardly any of that gas. Here we have direct evidence of 
oxidation taking place in a living tissue and in connection 
vith its functional activity; and what is true of a muscle 
is probably true of all tissues: the oxidations which supply 
them with energy take place within the living cells themselves. 
The statement frequently made that the oxygen in the cir¬ 
culating blood exists as ozone, rests on no sufficient basis; 
decomposing haemoglobin does ozonize some oxygen when 
exposed to the air, but there is no ozone in fresh blood. Ex¬ 
periments made by adding various combustible substances, as 
sugar, to newly drawn blood, also fail to prove the occurrence 
of any oxidation of such bodies in that liquid. 

Tissue-Building and Energy-Yielding Foods. The 
Human Body, like that of other animals, is, on the whole, 
chemically destructive; it takes in highly complex substances 
as food, and eliminates their elements in much simpler 
compounds, which can again be built up to their original 


NUTRITION. 


453 


condition by plants. Nevertheless the Body has certain con¬ 
structive powers: it, at least, builds up protoplasm from 
proteids and other substances received from the exterior; 
and there is reason to believe it does a good deal more of the 
same kind of work, though never an amount equalling its 
chemical destructions. Given one single proteid in its food, 
say egg albumen, the Body can do very well; making serum 
albumen and paraglobulin out of it for the blood, myosinogen 
for the muscles, and so on: in such cases the original proteid 
must have been taken more or less to pieces, remodelled, and 
built up again by the living tissues; and it is extremely 
doubtful if anything different occurs in other cases, when 
the proteid eaten happens to be one found in the Body. In 
fact, during digestion the proteids are broken down some¬ 
what and turned into peptones; in this state they are absorbed 
and must somewhere again be built up into the proteids of 
the tissues. 

The constructive powers of the Body used to be rather 
too much ignored. Foods were divided into assimilable and 
combustible , the former serving directly to renew the organs 
or tissues as they were used up, or to supply materials for 
growth; these were mainly proteids and fats; no special 
chemical synthesis was thus supposed to take place, the living 
cells being nourished by the reception from outside of mole¬ 
cules similar to those they had lost. Fat-cells, it was sup¬ 
posed, grew by picking up fatty molecules like their contents, 
received from the food; and albumen-rich tissues by the re¬ 
ception of ready-made proteid molecules, needing no further 
manufacture in the cell. The combustible foods, on the other 
hand, were the carbohydrates and some fat: the carbohy¬ 
drates, according to the hypothesis, were incapable of being 
made into parts of a living tissue, and were merely oxidized 
in order to maintain the bodily warmth. It having been 
proved, however, that more fat might accumulate in the body 
of an animal than was taken in its food, this excess was ac¬ 
counted for by supposing it was due to excess of com¬ 
bustible foods, converted into fats and stored away as oil- 
droplets in various cells; but not actually built up into true 
living adipose tissue. Liebig, somewhat similarly, classed all 
foods into plastic , concerned in making new tissue, and 
respiratory , directly oxidized before they ever constituted 
part of a tissue. The plastic foods were the proteids, but 


454 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


these also indirectly gave rise to the energy expended in 
muscular work, and to some heat: the proteid muscular fibre 
being broken first into a highly nitrogenous part (urea, or 
some body well on the road to become urea) and a non-nitro- 
genized richly hydrocarbonous part; and this latter was then 
oxidized and gave rise to heat. Several facts may be urged 
against this view: (1) Men in tropical climates live mainly 
on non-proteid foods, yet their chief needs are not heat pro¬ 
duction, but tissue formation and muscular work: according 
to Liebig’s view their diet should be mainly nitrogenous. 
(2) Carnivorous animals live on a diet very rich in proteids, 
nevertheless develop plenty of animal heat, and that without 
doing the excessive muscular work which, on Liebig’s theory, 
must first be gone through in order to break up the proteids, 
with the production of a non-azotized part which could then 
be oxidized for heat-production. (3) Great muscular work 
can be done on a diet poor in proteids; beasts of burden are 
for the most part herbivorous. (4) Further, we know exactly 
how much energy can be liberated by the oxidation of pro¬ 
teids to that stage which occurs in the Body; and it is pos¬ 
sible to estimate with considerable accuracy the amount of 
urea and uric acid excreted in a given time; from their sum 
the amount of proteid oxidized and the amount of energy 
liberated in that oxidation can be calculated; if this be done 
it is found that, nearly always, the muscular work done dur¬ 
ing the same period represents far more energy expended 
than could be yielded by the proteids broken down. 

The Source of the Energy Expended in Muscular Work. 
This important question, which was postponed in the chap¬ 
ters dealing with the pl^siology of the muscular tissues, 
needs now consideration. It may be put thus : Does a 
muscle-fibre w r ork by the oxidation of its proteids, i.e. by 
breaking them down into compounds which are then re¬ 
moved from it and conveyed out of the Body ? or does it 
work by the energy liberated by the oxidation of carbon and 
hydrogen compounds only ? The problem may be attacked 
in two ways: first, by examining the excretions of a man, or 
other animal, during work and rest; second, by examining 
directly the chemical changes produced in a muscle when it 
contracts. Both methods point to the same conclusion, viz., 
that proteid oxidation is not the source of the mechanical 
energy expended by the Body. 


NUTRITION ; 


455 


One gram (15.5 grains) of pure albumen when completely 
burnt liberates, as heat, an amount of energy equal to 2117 
kilogrammeters (15,270 foot-pounds). But in the Body pro- 
teids are not fully oxidized ; part of their carbon is, to form 
carbon dioxide, and part of the hydrogen, to form water; 
but some carbon and hydrogen pass out, combined with ni¬ 
trogen and oxygen, in the incompletely oxidized state of urea. 
Therefore all of the energy theoretically obtainable is not de¬ 
rived from proteids in the Body: from the above full amount 
for each gram of proteid we must take the quantity carried 
oil in the urea, which will be the amount liberated when that 
urea is completely oxidized. Each gram (15.5 grains) of 
proteid oxidized in the Body gives ^ of a gram (5.14 grains) 
of urea; since one gram of urea liberates, on oxidation,, 
energy amounting to 934 kilogrammeters (6740 foot-pounds), 
each gram of proteid oxidized, so far as is possible in the 
Body, will yield during the process 2117 — = 1805.7 kilo¬ 

grammeters (13,037 foot-pounds) of energy. Knowing that 
urea carries off practically all the nitrogen of proteids broken 
up in the Body, and contains 46.6 per cent of nitrogen, while 
proteids contain 16 per cent, it is easy to find that each gram 
of urea represents the decomposition of about 2.80 grams of 
proteid and, therefore, the liberation of 5060.00 kilogram¬ 
meters (36,533.0 foot-pounds) of energy. If, therefore, we 
know how much urea a man excretes during a given time, 
and how much mechanical work he does during the same 
time, we can readily discover if the latter could possibly have 
been done by the energy set free by proteid decomposition. 
Let us take a special case. Fick and Wislecenus, two Ger¬ 
man observers, climbed the Faulhorn mountain, which is 
1956 meters (about 6415 feet) high. Fick weighed 66 kilo¬ 
grams and, therefore, in lifting his Body alone, did during 
the ascent 129,096 kilogrammeters (932,073 foot-pounds) of 
work. Wislecenus, who weighed 76 kilograms, did similarly 
148,656 kilogrammeters (1,073,296 foot-pounds) of work. 
But during the ascent, and for five hours afterwards, Fick 
secreted urine containing urea answering only to 37.17 grams 
of proteid, and Wislecenus urea answering to 37 grams. 
Since each gram of proteid broken up in the Body liberates 
1805.7 kilogrammeters (13,037 foot-pounds) of energy, the 
amount that Fick could possibly have obtained from such a 
source is 1805.7 X 37.17 = 67,117 kilogrammeters (484,584 


456 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


foot-pounds), and Wislecenus 1805.7 X 37 = 66,810 kilo- 
grammeters. If to the muscular work done in actually rais¬ 
ing their bodies, we add that done simultaneously by the 
heart and the respiratory muscles, and in such movements 
of the limbs as were not actually concerned in lifting the 
weight, we should have, at least, to double the above total 
muscular work done ; and the amount of energy liberated 
meanwhile by proteid oxidation, becomes utterly inadequate 
for its execution. It is thus clear that muscular work is not 
wholly done at the expense of the oxidation of muscle pro¬ 
teid; and it is very probable that none is so done under ordi¬ 
nary circumstances, for the urea excretion during rest is 
about as great as that during work, if the diet remain the 
same: if the work be very severe, as in long-distance walking- 
matches, the urea quantity is sometimes temporarily raised, 
but this increase, which no doubt represents an abnormal 
wear and tear of muscle-fibre, is probably independent of the 
liberation of energy in the form in which a muscle can use it, 
more likely taking the form of heat ; and is, moreover, com¬ 
pensated for afterwards by a diminished urea excretion. 
Thus, hourly, before the ascent Fick and Wislecenus each 
excreted on the average about 4 grams (62 grains) of urea; 
during the ascent between 7 and 8 grams (108-124 grains); 
but during the subsequent 16 hours, when any urea formed 
in the work would certainly have reached the urine, only an 
average of about 3 grams (46.5 grains) per hour. 

It may still be objected, however, that a good deal of the 
muscle work may be done by the energy of oxidized muscle 
proteid; that the amount of this oxidation occurring in a 
muscle during rest or ordinary work is pretty constant and 
simply takes different forms in the two cases, much as a 
steam-engine with its furnace in full blast will burn as much 
coal when resting as when working, but in the former case 
lose all the generated energy in the form of heat, and in the 
latter partly as mechanical work. Thus the smallness of in¬ 
crease in urea excretion as a consequence of muscular activity 
could be explained, while still a good deal of utilizable energy 
might come from proteid degradation. But if this were so, 
then the working Body should eliminate no more carbon 
dioxide than the resting; the amount of chemical changes in 
its muscles being by hypothesis the same, the carbon dioxide 
eliminated should not be increased. Experiment, however. 


NUTRITION. 


457 


shows that it is, and that to a very large extent, even when 
the work done is quite moderate and falls within the limits 
which could be performed by the normal proteid degradation 
of the Body. Quite easy muscular work doubles the carbon 
dioxide excreted in twenty-four hours, and in a short period 
of very hard work it may rise to five times the amount elimi¬ 
nated during rest. Since the urea is not increased, or but 
slightly increased, at the same time, this carbon dioxide can¬ 
not be due to increased proteid metamorphosis; and it there¬ 
fore indicates that a muscle works by the oxidation of car¬ 
bonaceous non-nitrogenous compounds. Since all the carbon 
compounds oxidized in the Body contain hydrogen this 
element is also no doubt oxidized during muscular work; but 
the estimation of the amount so used is difficult and has 
not been satisfactorily made, because the Body contains so 
much water ready formed that a large quantity is always 
ready for increased evaporation from the lungs and skin, 
whenever the respirations are quickened, as they are by 
exercise. It, thus, is very difficult to say how much of the 
extra water eliminated from the Body during work is due 
merely to this cause and how much to increased hydrogen 
oxidation. 

The conclusion we are led to is, then, that a mus.cle 
works by the oxidation mainly, if not entirely, of carbon and 
hydrogen; and that the proteid constituents of the living 
muscle substance are essentially the machinery determining 
in what way the energy shall be spent: they may and do 
sutler some wear and tear, but this bears no direct proportion 
to the work done; as a steam-engine may rust, so muscle 
proteid may and does oxidize, but not to supply the organ 
with energy for use. This conclusion, arrived at by a study 
of the excretions of the whole Body, is confirmed by the re¬ 
sults obtained by the chemical study of a single muscle. 
A fresh frog’s muscle (which agrees in all essential points 
with a man’s) contains practically no carbon dioxide, yet 
made to work in a vacuum gives off that gas, and more the 
more it works Some carbon dioxide is therefore formed in 
the working muscle. If the muscle, after contracting as long 
as it can be made to do so, be thrown into death rigor it 
gives off more carbon dioxide; and if taken perfectly fresh 
and sent into rigor mortis without contracting, it gives off 
carbon dioxide also, in amount equal to the sum of that 


458 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


which it would have given off in two stages, if first worked 
and then sent into rigor. The muscle must, therefore, con¬ 
tain a certain store of a carbon-dioxide-yielding body, and 
the decomposition of this is associated with the occurrence 
both of muscular activity and death stiffening. Similar 
things are true of the acid simultaneously developed; the 
muscle when it works produces some sarcolactic acid, and 
when thrown into rigor mortis still more. No increase of 
urea or kreatin or any similar product of nitrogenous de- 
eomposition is found in a worked muscle when compared 
with a rested one, but the total carbohydrates are rather less 
in the former. These facts make it clear that muscular work 
is not done at the expense of proteid oxidation; and we have 
already seen (Chap. XXVI) that the oxygen a muscle uses in 
contracting is not taken up by it at the time it is used, since 
a muscle containing no oxygen will still contract in a vacuum 
and form carbon dioxide. It is probable that the chemical 
phenomena occurring in contraction and rigor are essentially 
the same; the death stiffening results when they occur to an 
■extreme degree. Provisionally one may explain the facts as 
follows: A muscle in the Body takes up from the blood, 
oxygen, proteids, and non-nitrogenous (carbohydrate or fatty) 
substances. These it builds up into a highly complex and 
very unstable compound, comparable, for example, to nitro¬ 
glycerine. When the muscle is stimulated this falls down 
into simpler substances in which stronger affinities are satis¬ 
fied ; among these are carbon dioxide and sarcolactic acid and 
a proteid (myosinogen). The energy liberated is thus in¬ 
dependent of any simultaneous taking up of oxygen; the 
amount possible depends only on how much of the decom¬ 
posable body existed in the muscle. Under natural condi¬ 
tions the carbon dioxide is carried off in the blood and per¬ 
haps the sarcolactic acid also, the latter to be elsewhere 
oxidized further to form water and more carbon dioxide. 
The mjmsinogen remains in the muscle-fibre and is combined 
with more oxygen, and with compounds of carbon and hydrogen 
taken from the blood, and built up into the unstable energy- 
yielding body again; no increased quantity of nitrogenous 
material, under ordinary circumstances, leaves the working 
muscle. If, however, the blood-supply be deficient, myosin 
forms from myosinogen and clots (Chap. IX) before this 
restitution takes place, and cannot be directly rebuilt into 


NUTRITION. 


459 


living muscle material; in excessive work the same thing 
partially occurs, decomposition occurring faster than recom¬ 
position; clotted myosin is then broken up into simpler 
bodies as kreatin, and these are somewhere turned into urea 
and excreted. In rigor mortis all the myosinogen passes into 
clotted myosin and causes the rigidity. A working muscle 
takes up more oxygen from the blood than a resting one, as 
is shown by a comparison of the gases of the venous blood 
of the two; this oxygen assumption is not necessarily pro¬ 
portionate to the carbon-dioxide elimination at the same 
time; for the latter depends on the breaking down of a 
material already accumulated in the muscle during rest, and 
this breaking down may occur faster than the reconstruction. 
We are thus enabled, also, to understand how, during exercise, 
the carbon dioxide evolved from the lungs may contain more 
oxygen than that taken up at the same time; for it is largely 
oxygen previously stored during rest which then appears in 
the carbon dioxide of the expired air. The kreatin which 
can always be found even in muscles suddenly killed after 
long rest, represents the breaking down of proteid in the 
chemical processes of the living fibres, in their vital meta¬ 
bolisms, which are not necessarily similar to the special 
chemical changes associated with a contraction. 

Are any Foods Respiratory in Liebig’s Sense of the 
Term ? We find, then, that Liebig’s classification of foods 
cannot be accepted in an absolute sense. There is no doubt 
that the substance broken down in muscular contraction is 
proper living muscular tissue; and if this (its proteid con¬ 
stituent being retained) be reconstructed from foods con¬ 
taining no nitrogen (whether carbohydrates or fats) then 
the term plastic or tissue-forming cannot be restricted to the 
proteids of the diet. We must rather conclude that any 
alimentary principle containing carbon may be used to re¬ 
place the oxidized carbon, and any containing hydrogen to 
replace the oxidized hydrogen, of a tissue; and so even non- 
proteid foods may be plastic. A certain proportion of the 
foods digested may perhaps be oxidized to yield energy, 
before they ever form part of a tissue; and so correspond 
pretty much to Liebig’s respiratory foods; but no hard and 
fast line can be drawn, making all proteid foods plastic and 
all oxidizable non-proteid foods respiratory. 

Luxus Consumption. Not only, as above pointed out, 


460 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


may non-nitrogenous foods be plastic but, on the other hand, 
it is certain that if any foods are oxidized at once before 
being organized into a tissue, proteids are under certain 
circumstances; namely, when they are contained in excess in 
a diet- If an animal be starved it is found that its non- 
nitrogenous tissues go first; an insufficiently fed animal loses 
its fat first, and if it ultimately dies of starvation is found to 
have lost 97 per cent of its adipose tissue and only about 30 
per cent of its proteid-rich muscular tissue, and almost none 
of its brain and spinal cord; all of*course reckoned by their 
dry weight. It is thus clear that the proteids of the tissues 
resist oxidation much better than fat does. But, on the 
other hand, if a well-fed animal be given a very rich proteid 
diet all the nitrogen of its food reappears in its urine, and 
that when it is laying up fat; so that then we get a state of 
things in which proteids are broken up more easily than 
fats. This indicates that proteid in the Body may exist 
under two conditions ; one, when it forms part of a living 
tissue and is protected to a great extent from oxidation, 
and another, in which it is oxidized with readiness and is 
presumably in a different condition from the first, being not 
yet built up into part of a living cell. The use of proteids 
for direct oxidation is known as luxus consumption ; how 
far it occurs under ordinary circumstances will be considered 
presently. The main point now to be borne in mind is that 
while all organic non-nitrogenous foods cannot be called 
respiratory , neither can proteids under all circumstances be 
called plastic , in Liebig’s sense. 

The Antecedents of Urea. In the long-run the pro¬ 
genitors of the urea excreted from the Body are the proteids 
taken in the food; but it remains still to be considered what 
intermediate steps these take before the excretion of their 
nitrogen in the urine. 

In seeking antecedents of urea one naturally turns first 
to the muscles, which form by far the largest mass of pro¬ 
teid tissues in the Body. Analysis shows that they always 
yield kreatin,the quantity of this in muscles being practically 
unaffected by work, and from 0.2 to 0.3 per cent of the dry 
weight of the muscle. Since it is readily soluble and dialyz- 
able, and therefore fitted to pass rapidly out of the muscles 
into the blood stream, it is a fair conclusion that a good deal 
of it is formed in the muscles daily and carried off from them. 


NUTRITION. 


461 


Kreatin, too, exists in the brain, and probably there and else¬ 
where in the nervous system is produced by chemical degra¬ 
dation of protoplasm; the spleen also contains a good deal 
of kreatin, and so do many glands. This substance would 
therefore seem to be constantly produced in considerable 
quantities by the protoplasmic tissues generally; and since 
it belongs to a group of nitrogenous compounds which the 
Body is unable to utilize for reconstruction into proteids, it 
must be carried off somehow. The urine, however, contains 
no kreatin and hut little of its immediate derivative, krea- 
tinin, and what kreatinin it does contain depends mainly on 
the feeding, since its amount varies with the diet and it 
disappears during starvation. Kreatin can readily be chem¬ 
ically broken up with hydration, yielding urea and sarkosin; 
and sarkosin in turn can be decomposed so as to yield its 
nitrogen in the form of urea. Hence there are no great 
chemical difficulties in regarding kreatin as the main im¬ 
mediate source of the urea of normal urine. There are some 
reasons for thinking that kreatin is not the form of the 
actual nitrogen waste in living muscle but a post-mortem 
product from that waste; but that is not of importance in 
the present connection. Whatever the original form of the 
waste substance be, if it be not kreatin it is certainly very 
easily converted into it. The formation of the final product, 
urea, does not occur in the muscles. They never contain 
urea; and very little of it, if any, can be extracted from the 
brain. 

Where the kreatin is finally changed into urea is doubt¬ 
ful. AVe have seen (Chap. XXVIII) that it is not formed in 
the kidneys but merely separated by them from the blood. 
A good deal of urea is found in the liver, which suggests some 
part played by that organ in urea formation. Further, in 
certain cases of hepatic disease (acute yellow atrophy) in 
which the liver cells are profoundly changed, the urea of the 
urine is greatly diminished and a quite different substance, 
leucin , takes its place; and this favors the view that the liver 
has much to do with the final elaboration of urea. It may 
also be noted in this connection that, quite apart from kreatin 
as a source of urea, there may be another in leucin, for leucin 
is very widely distributed through the Body, and when proteids 
are decomposed by various chemical methods leucin is very 
constant among the products. It is therefore a possible form 


462 


THE HUMAN BODY: 


for the primary nitrogen waste of many tissues. Chemically 
leucin is an ammonium derivative, being the amide of caproic 
(a fatty) acid. 

While the urea resulting from further changes in the 
kreatin, leucin, or similar substances formed in the tissues, is 
a measure of the wear and tear of their protoplasm, part of 
the urea excreted has probably a different source; being due 
to the oxidation of proteids as energy liberators or respira¬ 
tory foods, before they have ever formed a tissue. When 
abundant proteid food is taken the urea excretion is largely 
increased and that very rapidly, within a couple of hours for 
example, and before we can well suppose the proteids eaten 
to have been built up into tissues, and these in turn broken 
down; in fact there need be, and usually is, under such cir¬ 
cumstances no sign of any special activity of any group of 
tissues, such as one would expect to see if the urea always 
came from the breaking down of formed histological ele¬ 
ments. This urea is thus indicative of a utilization of pro¬ 
teids for other than plastic purposes; and the same fact is 
indicated by the storage of carbon and elimination of all 
the nitrogen of the food when a diet very rich in proteid 
alimentary principles is taken. This luxus consumption may 
be compared to the paying out of gold by a merchant instead 
of greenbacks when he has an abundance of both. Only the 
gold can be used for certain purposes, as settling foreign 
debts, but any quantity above that needed for such a purpose 
is harder to store than the paper money, and not so con¬ 
venient to handle; so it is paid out in preference to the 
paper money, which is really somewhat less valuable, as 
available at par only for the settlement of domestic debts. 
Similarly, only proteids can be used for certain final stages of 
tissue building, but an excess of them is more difficult to 
store than fats or carbohydrates, and so is eliminated in pref¬ 
erence to them. 

In artificial pancreatic digestions, when long carried on, 
two bodies, called leucin and tyrosin, are produced from 
proteids. It is found that when leucin is given to an ani¬ 
mal in its food, it reappears in the urine as urea; so the Body 
can turn leucin into that substance. Hence a possible source 
of some of the luxus-consumption urea is leucin produced dur¬ 
ing intestinal digestion; and this is very likely turned into 
urea in the liver. Mammalia rapidly die when the liver is 


NUTRITION. 


463 


removed, but some birds survive for a time. In them it has 
been found that the uric acid (which in avian urine has the 
predominance which urea takes in mammalian) excreted is 
diminished after extirpation of the liver; and also that leucin 
which when given to the normal bird reappears in the urine 
as uric acid, in the bird from which the liver has been removed 
is excreted unaltered. 

Circulating and Fixed Proteid. When an animal is 
fed on food deficient in proteids, or containing none of them 
at all, its urea excretion falls very rapidly during the first day 
or two, but then much more slowly until death: there is thus 
indicated a double source of urea,apart resulting from tissue 
wear and tear, and always present; and a part resulting from 
the breaking down of proteids not built up into tissue, and 
ceasing when the amount of this proteid in the Body (in the 
blood for example) falls below a certain limit as a result of 
the starvation. As the nitrogen-starved Body wastes, its 
bulk of proteid tissues is slowly reduced and the urea result¬ 
ing from their degradation diminishes also. How well pro¬ 
teid built up into a tissue resists removal is shown by the 
tacts already mentioned as to the relative losses of the pro- 
teid-ricli and proteid-poor tissues during starvation. 

On the other hand, if an animal be taken while starving 
and losing weight and have a small amount of flesh given it, 
it will continue to lose weight, and more urea than before 
will appear in the urine; increased proteid diet increases the 
proteid metamorphosis, and the animal still loses, though 
less rapidly than it did. A little more proteid still increases 
proteid metamorphosis in its body and its urea elimination, 
and so on for some time; but each increment of proteid in 
the food increases the nitrogenous metamorphosis in propor¬ 
tion to itself somewhat less than the preceding one did, until, 
finally, a point is reached at which the nitrogen egesta and 
ingesta balance: in a dog this occurs when the animal gets 
daily its weight of lean meat, along with the necessary 
water/ More flesh if then given is at first stored up and the 
animal increases in weight; but very soon the greater wear 
and tear of the larger mass of tissues shows itself as increased 
urea excretion, and again the egesta and ingesta balance, and 
the animal comes to a new weight equilibrium at the higher 
level. More meat now causes a repetition of the phenomenon: 
at first increase of tissue, and nitrogen storage; and then a 


464 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


cessation of the gain in weight, and an excretion in twenty- 
four hours of all the nitrogen taken. And so on, until the 
animal refuses to eat a larger quantity. 

These facts seem, very clearly, to show that proteids can¬ 
not be built up quickly into tissues. Meat given to the 
starving animal has its proteids, at first, used up mainly in 
luxus consumption —while a little is stored as tissue, though 
at first not enough to counterbalance the daily tissue waste. 
When a good deal more proteid is given than answers to the 
nitrogen excretion during starvation, the animal builds up 
as much into living tissue as it breaks down in the vital 
processes of these, the rest going in luxus consumption ; it 
thus neither gains nor loses. Still more proteid if now given 
does not all appear in the urine at once; some is used to 
build up new tissue, but only slowly; then, after some days, 
the increased metabolism of the increased mass of living 
tissues balances the excess of nitrogen in the diet, and equi¬ 
librium is again attained. But, all through, it seems clear 
that the tissue formation is slow and gradual; and so it be¬ 
comes additionally probable that the increased urea excretion 
soon after a meal is not due to rapidly increased tissue forma¬ 
tion and degradation, but to a more direct proteid destruction. 
The more stable proteid, that which breaks down slowly in 
starvation and is rebuilt slowly when food is given, has been 
distinguished as fixed or tissue albumen from the less stable 
portion, which from the belief that it mainly exists in the 
liquids of the Body has been named circulating albumen 
Feeding experiments further show the important fact that 
the gelatinous or albuminoid foods cannot be converted 
into fixed proteid; for its formation true albumens are 
required. The tissues of an animal deprived of all proteid 
food-stuffs waste, no matter how much albuminoids be given: 
but given some of the latter the Body can build tissues and 
maintain their integrity with less true proteid than would 
otherwise be necessary, so the gelatin-yielding foods are by 
no means without nutritive value. 

The Storage Tissues. Every healthy cell of the Body 
contains at any moment some little excess of material laid 
by in itself, above what is required for its immediate neces¬ 
sities. The capacity of contracting, and the concomitant 
evolution of carbon dioxide, exhibited by an excised muscle 
in a vacuum, seem to show that even oxygen, of which 


NUTRITION. 


465 


warm-blooded animals have but a small reserve, may be 
stored up in the living.tissues in such forms that they can 
utilize it, even when the air-pump fails to extract any from 
them. But in addition to the supplies for immediate spend¬ 
ing, contained in all the cells, we find special food reserves 
in the Body, on which any of the tissues can call at need. 
These, especially the oxygen and proteid reserves, are found 
for most part in the blood. Special oxygen storage is, however, 
rendered unnecessary by the fact that the Body can, except 
under very unusual circumstances, get more from the air at 
any time, so the quantity of this substance laid by is only 
small; hence death from asphyxia follows very rapidly when 
the air-passages are stopped; while, on account of the re¬ 
serves laid up, death from other forms of starvation is a 
much slower occurrence. Proteids, also, w*e have learnt from 
the study of muscle, are probably but little concerned in 
energy-production in the tissues. Speaking broadly, the 
work of the Body is carried on by the oxidation of carbon 
and hydrogen, and we find in the Body, in correspondence 
with this fact, two great storehouses of fatty and carbo¬ 
hydrate foods, which serve to supply the materials for the 
performance of work and the maintenance of the bodily 
temperature in the intervals between meals, and during 
longer periods of starvation. One such store, that of car¬ 
bohydrate material, is found in the liver-cells; the other, 
or fatty reserve, is laid by in the adipose tissue and to a cer¬ 
tain extent in oil droplets found in other cells, and sometimes 
in blood and lymph. That such substances are true reserves, 
not for any special local purpose but for the use of the Body 
generally, is shown by the way they disappear in starvation; 
the liver reserve in a few days, and the fat somewhat later 
and more slowly, but very largely before any of the other 
tissues has been seriously affected. By using these accumu¬ 
lated matters the Body can work and keep warm during 
several days of more or less deficient feeding; and the fatter 
an animal is at the beginning of a starvation period the 
longer will it live; which would not be the case could not its 
fat "be utilized by the working tissues. Hibernating animals 
prove the same thing; bears, before their winter sle p, are 
very fat, and at the end of it commonly very thin; while 
their muscular - and nervous systems are not noticeably 
diminished in mass. During the whole winter, then, the 


466 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


energy needed to keep the heart and respiratory muscles at 
work, and to maintain the temperature of the body, must 
have been obtained from the oxidation of the fat reserve 
with which the animal started. 

Glycogen. The size of the liver was long a stumbling- 
block to physiologists: it was difficult to understand why so 
large an organ should be developed for the mere secretion of 
some bile, a not very important digestive liquid. But even 
centuries ago some glimmering of the truth was guessed, 
and the liver was believed to be concerned in the elaboration 
of nutritive blood , which was distinguished from the blood, 
charged with vital spirits , which came from the lungs and 
the left side of the heart. Harvey’s discovery of the real 
course of the circulation, and Lavoisier’s interpretation of 
the meaning of respiration, upset these crude doctrines; and 
for long the germ of truth which they contained was lost to 
view in the glare of the new light. We have now learned, 
on a new basis of actual experiment, that the liver is very 
largely concerned in the nutritive processes of the Body: its 
relation to proteid metabolism and urea formation has 
already been considered, and we have now to study its 
activity in regard to the formation, and storage, and trans¬ 
mission of a carbohydrate substance, glycogen. 

If a liver be cut up two or three hours after removal from 
the body of a healthy well-fed animal, and thoroughly ex¬ 
tracted with water, it will yield much grape-sugar. If, on the 
other hand, a perfectly fresh liver be heated rapidly to the tem¬ 
perature of boiling water, and be then pounded up and ex¬ 
tracted, it will yield a milky solution, containing little grape- 
sugar, but much glycogen; a substance which chemically 
has the same empirical formula as starch (C 6 H 10 OJ, and in 
other ways is closely allied to that body. The salivary and 
pancreatic secretions rapidly convert it into the sugar maltose , 
as they do starch. The transformation of glycogen into glucose 
(grape sugar) which occurs in the liver after death and prob¬ 
ably also during life is then quite different from that brought 
about by the digestive enzymes; and in fact no enzyme has 
been extracted from fresh liver. The change is apparently 
not a fermentative one, but one dependent on some vital 
metabolic activity of the liver-cells, which activity is greatly 
accelerated during their period of dying: hence the need of 
killing them rapidly by boiling, if any considerable amount of 


NUTRITION. 


467 


glycogen is to be obtained from the organ. Pure glycogen 
is a white amorphous inodorous powder, readily soluble in 
water, forming an opalescent milky solution; insoluble in 
alcohol, and giving with iodine a red coloration which dis¬ 
appears on heating and reappears on cooling again. 

About four per cent of glycogen can be obtained from 
the liver of a well-nourished animal (dog or rabbit). This 
for the human liver, which weighs about 1500 grams (53 
oz.), would give about 60 grams (2.1 oz.) of glycogen at any 
one moment. The quantity actually formed daily is, how¬ 
ever, much in excess of that, since glycogen is constantly 
being removed from the liver and carried elsewhere, while a 
fresh supply is formed in the organ. Its quantity is subject, 
also, to considerable fluctuations; being greatest about two 
hours after a good meal, and falling from that time until the 
next digestion period commences, when it begins to rise 
until it again attains its maximum. If a warm-blooded 
animal be starved glycogen disappears from its liver in the 
course of four or five days. We are, thus, led to believe that 
glycogen is being constantly used up, and that its mainte¬ 
nance in normal quantity depends on food supply. 

The accumulation and disappearance of glycogen can be 
demonstrated histologically. The liver is essentially a com¬ 
pound tubular gland, but its structure is obscured by the fact 
that the hepatic cells are very large in proportion to the 
tubules which they surround, so that these are reduced to 
mere ductules , formed by the apposition of grooves on the 
adjacent sides of two cells; and by the fact that cells and 
ductules form an irregular network interlaced with the capil¬ 
laries of the lobule (Chap. XXII), which capillaries are far 
larger than the interlobular bile-ducts. When properly pre¬ 
pared hepatic cells, taken from a healthy well-fed animal, 
are examined, the side of the cell nearest the bile-ductule is 
seen to be granular, and it also picks up readily most of the 
ordinary protoplasmic stains. The rest of the cell contains 
few granules and does not stain with carmine, but it does 
stain red with iodine. It is in fact mainly filled with glyco¬ 
gen, and if this be dissolved out by digestion with saliva there 
is left a loose protoplasmic network. If sections from the 
liver of a starved animal be compared with those from a 
well-fed, the liver-cells are seen to be considerably smaller, to 
be granular throughout, and to stain everywhere with carmine 


468 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


and not at all with iodine: they contain no glycogen and may 
be compared with the cells of the pancreas in a late stage of 
digestion (Chap. XIX). 

In the liver we have to deal with cells of twofold function; 
the granular portion of each especially concerned with bile 
secretion, and the larger portion of the cell with the making 
of glycogen. In a salivary gland we have cells whose sole 
apparent function is the formation of secretion to be poured 
into the gland ducts; in the thyroid and suprarenal bodies 
we find cells forming special materials which are passed into 
blood or lymph. The hepatic cells do both, and it should be 
borne in mind that possibly all gland-cells do. In fact it has 
already been pointed out that the pancreas has still an¬ 
other function than the formation of pancreatic juice. As 
regards the liver-cells, we naturally ask whether the two 
processes, bile-making and glycogen-making, are distinct and 
independent activities, or whether bile and glycogen are 
simultaneous products of a single metabolic activity, as soap 
and glycerine are of the chemical process of soap-making: 
but to this question it is not possible yet to give a satisfactory 
answer. 

The Source and Destination of Liver Glycogen. All 

foods are not equally efficacious in keeping up the stock of 
glycogenin the liver; fats by themselves are useless; proteids 
by themselves give a little; by far the most is formed on 
a diet rich in starch and sugar ; so it would seem that glyco¬ 
gen is mainly formed from carbohydrate materials absorbed 
from the alimentary canal and carried to the hepatic cells by 
the portal vein. The chief of these materials is probably 
glucose, since, although saliva and the amvlolytic ferment of 
the pancreas convert starch into maltose (C 12 H 22 O n + H 2 0), 
of the cane-sugar group, the intestinal secretion rapidly con¬ 
verts this into grape-sugar or glucose. This is taken up by 
the liver-cells, modified by them and stored as glycogen; and 
by their further activity from time to time reconverted into 
glucose and passed into the blood according to the needs of 
the Body in general. The cells then do distinctly chemical 
work on the carbohydrate material: possibly, indeed even 
probably, they build that supplied into their own living sub¬ 
stance and then by partial breaking down of this, deposit some 
of it for a time as glycogen: and by further living activity 
turn this into glucose and send it on to the blood, when the 


NUTRITION. 


469 


sugar in that liquid falls below a certain percentage. That 
the chief part of the glycogen found in the normal liver has 
its ultimate source in carbohydrate foods is shown by several 
facts. (1) Sugar if it exist in the blood in above a certain 
small percentage, passes out by the kidneys and appears in the 
urine, constituting the characteristic symptom of the disease 
called diabetes. In health, however, even after a meal very 
rich in carbohydrates, sugar rarely appears in the urine, and 
then but temporarily; so that the large quantity of it absorbed 
from the alimentary canal within a brief time under such cir¬ 
cumstances, must be stopped somewhere before it reaches the 
general blood-current. (2) Glucose injected into one of the 
general veins of an animal, if in any quantity, soon appears 
in the urine; but the same amount injected into the portal 
vein, or one of its radicles, causes no diabetes, but an accumu¬ 
lation of glycogen in the liver. We may therefore conclude 
that the sugar absorbed from the alimentary canal is taken 
by the portal vein to the liver, and there converted into 
glycogen and stayed for a time; and later slowly passed on 
into the hepatic veins during the intervals between meals. 
Thus in spite of the intervals which elapse between meals the 
carbohydrate content of the blood is kept pretty constant: 
during digestion it is not suffered to rise very high, nor dur¬ 
ing ordinary periods of fasting to fall very much below the 
average. 

In what form glycogen leaves the liver is not certain ; it 
might be dissolved out and carried off as such, or previously 
turned again into glucose and sent on in that form; since the 
fresh liver-cells are capable of changing glycogen into glucose 
the latter view is the more probable. Analyses of portal and 
hepatic bloods, made with the view of determining whether 
more sugar was carried out of the liver during fasting than 
into it, are conflicting; and considering the great amount of 
blood which flows through the liver in twenty-four hours, a 
very slight increase of sugar (falling within the limits of 
error of the difficult quantitative determination of that sub¬ 
stance in the blood) in the hepatic vein would represent a 
large total amount during the whole day. The main fact, 
however, remains that somehow this carbohydrate reserve in 
the liver is steadily carried off to be used elsewhere: and 
animal glycogen thus answers pretty much to vegetable starch, 
which, made in the green leaves, is dissolved and carried away 


470 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


by the sap currents to distant and not green parts (as the 
grains of corn or tubers of a potato, which cannot make starch 
for themselves) and in them is again laid down in the form of 
solid starch grains, which are subsequently dissolved and used 
for the growth of the germinating seed or potato. Seasons 
have been given in an early part of this chapter for believing 
that the carbohydrate leaving the liver is not oxidized in the 
blood, but only after it has passed out of that into the organ- 
ized tissue. Among these the muscles at least seem to get 
some, since a fresh muscle always contains glycogen, and even 
to retain it in normal amount after an animal has been starved 
for some time; the muscle-fibres then, so to speak, drawing on 
the balance with their banker (the liver) so long as there is 
any. When a muscle contracts, this glycogen disappears and 
some glucose appears, but not an amount equivalent to the 
glycogen used up; so that the working muscle, it is probable* 
uses this substance, among others, for its repair after each 
contraction. 

How it is that the glycogen, which is so rapidly converted 
into grape-sugar by the dying liver, escapes such rapid con¬ 
version during life has not been satisfactorily answered. It 
may be that the metabolisms of the dying hepatic cell include 
processes which are an exaggeration of those occurring dur¬ 
ing normal life; in some such way as the production of myo¬ 
sin in dying muscle is apparently an exaggeration of chemical 
changes occurring in normal contracting muscle: or the gly¬ 
cogen in the living cell may not exist free, but combined 
with other portions of the cell substance so as to be pro¬ 
tected ; while, after death, post-mortem changes may rapidly 
liberate it in a condition to be acted upon. 

Diabetes. The study of this disease throws some light 
upon the history of glycogen. Two distinct varieties of it 
are known; one in which sugar appears in the urine only 
when the patient takes carbohydrate foods; the other in 
which it is still excreted when he takes no such foods, and 
must therefore form sugar in his Body from substances not at 
all chemically allied to it. The more probable source of the 
sugar in the latter case is proteids; since some glycogen is- 
found in the livers of animals fed on proteids only, while fats 
by themselves give none of it. It seems that the proteid 
molecule, in some complex way, is split up in the liver into a 
highly nitrogenized part (urea or an antecedent of urea) and 


NU TUITION. 


471 


a nonazotized part, glycogen. On this view the more severe 
form of diabetes would be due to an increased activity of a 
normal proteid-decomposing function of the hepatic cells; and 
sometimes the urea and sugar in the urine of diabetics rise 
and fall together, thus seeming to indicate a community of 
origin. Diabetes dependent on carbohydrate food might be 
produced in several ways. The liver-cells might cease to 
stop the sugar and, letting it all pass on into the general cir¬ 
culation, suffer it to rise to such a percentage in the blood 
after a meal, that it attained the proportion in which the 
kidneys pass it out; or the tissues might cease to use their 
natural amount of sugar, and this, sent on steadily out of the 
liver, at last rise in the blood to the point of excretion. Or 
the liver might transform (into glucose) and pass on its gly¬ 
cogen faster than the other tissues used it, and so diabetes 
might arise; but this would only be temporary, lasting until 
the liver stock was used up by the rapid conversion. Arti¬ 
ficially we can, in fact, produce diabetes in several of these 
ways; curari poisoning, for example, paralyzing the motor 
nerves, makes the skeletal muscles lie completely at rest, and 
so diminishes the glycogen consumption of the Body and pro¬ 
duces diabetes. Carbon-monoxide poisoning produces dia¬ 
betes also, presumably by checking bodily oxidation. Fi¬ 
nally, pricking a certain spot in the medulla oblongata causes 
a temporary .diabetes. This might conceivably be due to the 
fact that the operation injures that part of the vaso-motor 
centre which controls the muscular coat of the hepatic artery, 
and this artery, then dilating, carries so much blood through 
the liver that an excess of glycogen is carried off by the 
hepatic veins; and in favor of this opinion is the fact that if 
the splanchnic nerves be cut the whole arteries of the ab¬ 
dominal viscera dilate no diabetes follows. This has been 
explained as due to the fact that so many vessels are dilated 
that a great part of the blood of the Body accumulates in 
them, and there is in consequence no noticeably increased 
flow through the liver. Others, however, maintain that the 
<( piqure ” diabetes (as that due to pricking the medulla is 
called) is due to irritation of trophic nerve-fibres originating 
there, and governing the rate at which the liver-cells produce 
glycogen or convert it into glucose. This latter view, 
though perhaps the less commonly accepted, is probably the 
more correct. The hepatic cells do not merely hold back 


472 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


glucose carried through the liver so that it is there to be 
washed out by a greater blood-flow, but they feed on sugar 
and proteids and make glycogen; an.d this is later converted 
into glucose and carried off. Glycogen, except for its dis¬ 
charge into the blood instead of a gland duct, would then be 
comparable to the materials stored in the cells of the salivary 
and some other glands (Chap. XIX); and the transforma¬ 
tion of such bodies into the specific element of a secretion 
we have already seen to be directly under the control of the 
nervous system, and almost entirely or quite independent of 
the simultaneous blood-flow. 

The History of Fats. While glycogen forms a reserve 
store of material which is subject to rapid alterations, deter¬ 
mined by meal-times, the fats are much more stable; their 
periods of fluctuation are regulated by days, weeks, or months 
of good or bad nutrition, and during starvation they are not 
so readily, or at least so rapidly, called upon as the hepatic 
glycogen. If we carry on the simile by which we compared 
the reserve in each cell to pocket-money, the glycogen 
would answer somewhat to a balance on the right side 
with a man’s banker; while the fat would represent assets or 
securities not so rapidly realizable; as capital in business, or 
the cargoes afloat in the argosies of Antonio, the “ Merchant 
of Venice.” Fat, in fact, is slowly laid down in fat-cells and 
surrounded in these by a cell-wall, and, being itself insoluble 
in blood plasma or lymph, it must undergo chemical changes, 
which no doubt require some time, before it can be taken 
into the blood and carried off to other parts. 

When adipose tissue is developing it is seen that undif¬ 
ferentiated cells in the connective tissues (especially areolar) 
show minute oil-drops in their protoplasm; these increase 
in size and ultimately fuse together and form one larger 
oil-droplet, while most of the original protoplasm disappears. 

The oily matter would thus seem due to a chemical meta¬ 
morphosis of the cell protoplasm, during which it gives rise 
to a non-azotized fatty residue which remains behind, and a 
highly nitrogenous part which is carried off. In many parts 
of the Body protoplasmic masses are subject to a similar but 
less complete metamorphosis; fatty degeneration of the heart, 
for example, is a more or less extensive replacement of the 
proper substance of its muscular fibres by fat-droplets; and 
the cream of milk and the oily matter of the sebaceous secre 


NUTRITION. 


473 


lion are due to a similar fatty degeneration in gland-cells. 
Moreover, careful feeding experiments undoubtedly show that 
fat can come from proteids; when an animal is very richly 
supplied with these all the nitrogen taken in them reappears 
.in its excretions, but all the carbon does not; it is in part 
stored in the Body: and, since such feeding produces but 
little glycogen, this carbon can only be stored as fat. 

While there is, then, no doubt that some fat may have a 
proteid origin, it is not certain that all has such. During 
digestion a great deal of fat is ordinarily absorbed, in a 
chemically unchanged state, from the alimentary canal ; it is 
merely emulsified and carried olf in minute drops by the chyle 
to be poured into the blood; and this fat might conceiveably 
be directly deposited, as such, in adipose tissue. There are, 
however, good reasons for supposing that all the fat in the 
Body is manufactured. The fat of a man, of a dog, and of a 
cat varies in the proportions of palmatin, stearin, margarin, 
and olein in it; and varies in just the same way if all be fed 
on the same kind of food, which could not be the case if the 
fat eaten were simply deposited unchanged. Moreover, if 
an animal be fed on a diet containing one kind of fat only, 
say olein, but a very slightly increased percentage of that 
particular fatty substance is found in its adipose tissue, 
which goes to show that if fats come from fats eaten, these 
latter are first pulled to bits by the living cells and built up 
again into the forms normal to the animal; so that, even with 
fatty food, the fats stored up seem to be in most part manu¬ 
factured in the Body. 

In still a?iother way it is proved that fats can be con¬ 
structed in the Body. In animals fed for slaughter, the total 
fat stored up in them during the process is greatly in excess 
of that taken with their food during the same time. For 
example, a fattening pig may store up nearly five hundred 
parts of fat for every hundred in its food, and this fat must be 
made from proteids or carbohydrates. Whether it can come 
from the latter is still perhaps an open question; for, while 
all fattening foods are rich in starch or similar bodies, there 
are considerable chemical difficulties in supposing an origin 
of fats from such; and it is on the whole more probable that 
they simply act by sparing from use fats simultaneously 
formed or stored in the body, and which would have other¬ 
wise been called upon. They make glycogen, and this 


474 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


shelters the fats. Liebig, indeed, in a very celebrated dis¬ 
cussion, maintained that fats were formed from carbohydrates 
He showed that a cow gave out more butter in its milk than 
it received fats in its food; and Huber, the blind naturalist, 
showed that bees still made wax (a fatty body) for a time 
when fed on pure sugar; and indefinitely when fed on honey.. 
Consequently, for a long time, an origin of fats from carbo¬ 
hydrates was supposed to be proved; but their possible origin 
from proteids (a possibility now shown to be a certainty) was 
neglected, and the validity of the above proofs of their carbo¬ 
hydrate origin is thus upset. The cow may have made its 
butter from proteids; the bees, fed on sugar, their wax for a 
time from proteids already in their bodies; and, indefinitely, 
when fed on honey, from the proteids in that substance. 
Moreover, animals (ducks) fed on abundant rice, which con¬ 
tains much carbohydrate but very little proteid or fat, remain 
lean; while if some fat be added they lay up fat. 

Persons who fatten cattle for the butcher find that the 
foods useful for the purpose all contain proteids, carbohy¬ 
drates, and fats, and that rapid fattening is only obtained 
with foods containing a good deal of fat; as oilcake, milk, 
or Indian corn. Taking all the facts into account we shall 
probably not be wrong in concluding that nearly all the 
bodily fat is manufactured either from fats or proteids; 
from fats easier than from anything else, but when much 
proteid is eaten some is made from it also. Carbohydrates 
alone do not fatten; the animal body cannot make its pal- 
matin, etc., out of them. Nevertheless they are, indirectly, 
important fattening foods when given with others, since, 
being oxidized instead of it, they protect the fat formed. 

Dietetics. That “one man’s meat may be another man’s 
poison ” is a familiar saying, and one that, no doubt, ex~ 
presses a certain amount of truth; but the difference probably 
depends on the varying digestive powers of individuals 
rather than on peculiarities in their laws of cell nutrition: 
we all need about the same amount of proteids, fats, and 
carbohydrates for each kilogram of body weight; but all of 
us cannot digest the same varieties of them equally well: it 
is also a matter of common experience that some foods have 
peculiar, almost poisonous, effects on certain persons. Some 
people are made ill by mutton, which the majority digest 
better than beef. 


NUTRITION. 


475 


The proper diet must necessarily vary, at least as to 
amount, with the work done; whether it should vary in kind 
with the nature of the work is not so certain. Provided a 
man gets enough proteids to balance those lost in the wear 
and tear of his tissues, it probably matters little whether he 
gets for oxidation and the liberation of energy either fats or 
carbohydrates, or even excess of proteids themselves; any one 
of the three will allow him to work either his brain or his 
muscles, and to maintain his temperature. Proteids, how¬ 
ever, are wasteful foods for mere energy-yielding purposes: 
in the first place, they are more costly than the others; 
secondly, they are incompletely oxidized in the Body; and, 
thirdly, it is probably more laborious to the system to get rid 
of urea than of the carbon dioxide and water, which alone 
are yielded by the oxidation of fats and carbohydrates. Be¬ 
tween fats and carbohydrates similar considerations lead to 
a use of the latter when practicable: starch is more easily 
utilized in the Body than fats, as shown by the manner in 
which it protects the latter from oxidation; and a given 
weight of starch fully oxidized in the Body will liberate 
about one half as much energy as the same amount of butter, 
while it costs considerably less than half the money. Also, 
starch is more easily digested than fats by most persons: 
children especially are apt to be fond of starchy or saccharine 
foods and to loathe fats; and the appetite in such cases is 
a good guide. As a rule the people of the United States 
differ very markedly from the English in their love of sweet 
foods of all kinds; whether this is correlated with their char¬ 
acteristic activity, calling for some food that can be rapidly 
used, is an interesting question. 

It is certain that no general rules for the best dietary 
for all persons can be formulated, but on broad principles 
the best diet is that which contains just the amount of pro- 
teid necessary for tissue repair, and so much carbohydrates 
as can be well digested; the balance needed, if any, being 
made up by fats and gelatinoids. Such a food would be 
the cheapest; that is, the supplying of it would call for less 
of the time and energy of the nation using it, and leave more 
work to spare for other pursuits than food production—for 
all the arts which make life agreeable and worth living, and 
which elevate civilized man above the merely material life of 
the savage whose time is devoted to catching and eating. 


476 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


We have high authority for saying that man does not live by 
bread alone; in other words, his highest development is 
impossible when he is totally absorbed in “ keeping body and 
soul together,” and the more labor that can be spared from 
getting enough food the better chance has he, if he use his 
leisure rightly, of becoming a more worthy man. While 
there is, thus, a theoretically best diet, it is nevertheless 
impossible to say what that is for each individual; but what 
the general experience is may be approximately gathered by 
taking an average of the dietaries of a number of public 
institutions in which the health of many people is main¬ 
tained as economically as possible. Such an examination 
made by Moleschott gives us as its result a diet containing 
daily— 


Proteids. 30 grams or 465 grains 

Fats. 84 “ or 1,300 “ 

Carbohydrates. 404 “ or 6,262 “ 

Salts. 30 “ or 465 “ 

Water. 2800 “ or 43,400 “ 


People in easy circumstances take as a rule more proteids 
and fats and less amyloids; and this selection, when a choice 
is possible, probably indicates that such a diet is the better 
one: the proteids in the above table seem especially deficient. 
Experimenting on himself the physiologist Ranke found that 
when he was in good health, neither gaining nor losing 
weight, and excreting daily as much nitrogen as he took in 
food, he maintained this condition of equilibrium on a diet 
containing 


Proteids. 100 grams ( 1550 grains) 

Fats . 100 “ ( 1550 " ) 

Carbohydrates. 240 ** ( 3720 “ ) 

Salts. 25 ** ( 437 «< ) 

Water. 2600 “ (40,400 •* ) 


Other experimenters have since arrived at very similar re- 
suits; and such a diet is probably about the normal for per¬ 
sons of our race living in a temperate climate. 












CHAPTER XXX. 


THE PRODUCTION AND REGULATION OF THE HEAT OF 
THE BODY. 

Cold- and Warm-blooded Animals. All animals, so 
long as they are alive, are the seat of chemical changes by 
which heat is liberated; hence all tend to be somewhat 
warmer than their ordinary surroundings, though the differ¬ 
ence may not be noticeable unless the heat production is 
considerable. A frog or a fish is a little hotter than the air 
or water in which it lives, but not much; the little heat that 
it produces is lost, by radiation or conduction, almost at once. 
Hence such animals have no proper temperature of their own; 
on a warm day they are warm, on a cold day cold, and are 
accordingly known as changeable-temper atured {poikilu-tlier- 
mous) or, in ordinary language, “cold-blooded” animals. 
Man and other mammals, as well as birds, on the contrary, 
are the seat of very active chemical changes by which much 
heat is produced, and so maintain a tolerably uniform tem¬ 
perature of their own, much as a fire does whether it be burn¬ 
ing in a warm or a cold room; the heat production during 
any given time balancing the loss, a normal body temperature 
is maintained, and usually one considerably higher than that 
of the medium in which they live; such animals are com¬ 
monly named “warm-blooded.” This name, however, does 
not properly express the facts; a lizard basking in the sun 
on a warm summer's day may be quite as hot as a man usu¬ 
ally is; but on the cold day the lizard becomes cold, while 
the average temperature of the healthy Human Body is, 
within a degree, the same in winter or summer; within the 
arctic circle or on the equator. Hence it is better to call 
such animals “ liomathermouz ” or of uniform temperature. 

Moderate warmth accelerates protoplasmic activity; com¬ 
pare a frog dormant in the winter with the same animal ac¬ 
tive in the warm months: what is true of the whole frog is 
true of each of its living cells. Its muscles contract more 

477 


478 


THE HUMAN BODY 


rapidly when warmed, and the white corpuscles of its blood 
when heated up to the temperature of the Human Body are 
seen (with the microscope) to exhibit much more active amoe¬ 
boid movements than they do at the temperature of frog’s 
blood. In summer a frog or other cold-blooded animal uses 
much more oxygen and evolves much more carbon dioxide 
than in winter, as shown not only by direct measurements of 
its gaseous exchanges, but by the fact that in winter a frog 
can live a long time after its lungs have been removed (being 
able to breathe sufficiently through its moist skin), while in 
warm weather it dies of asphyxia very soon after the same 
loss. The warmer weather puts its tissues in a more active 
state; and so the amount of work the animal does, and there¬ 
fore the amount of oxygen it needs, depend to a great extent 
upon the temperature of the medium in which it is living. 
With the warm-blooded animal the reverse is the case. Within 
very wide limits of exposure to heat or cold it maintains its 
temperature at that at which its tissues live best; accordingly 
in cold weather it uses more oxygen and sets free more carbon 
dioxide because it needs a more active internal combustion to 
compensate for its greater loss of heat to the exterior. And 
it does not become warmer in warm weather, partly because 
its oxidations are less than in cold (other things being equal), 
and partly because of physiological arrangements by which it 
loses heat faster from its body. In fact the living tissues of 
a man may be compared to hothouse plants, living in an arti¬ 
ficially maintained temperature; but they differ from the 
plants in the fact that they themselves are the seats of the 
combustions by which the temperature is kept up. Since, 
within wide limits, the Human Body retains the same temper¬ 
ature no matter whether it be in cold or warm surroundings, 
it is clear that it must possess an accurate arrangement for 
heat regulation; either by controlling the production of heat 
in it, or the loss of heat from it, or both. 

The Temperature of the Body. The parts of the Body 
are all either in contact with one another directly or, if not, 
at least indirectly through the blood, which, flowing from 
part to part, carries heat from warmer to colder regions. 
Thus, although at one time one group of muscles may espe¬ 
cially work, liberating heat, and at other times another, or 
the muscles may be at rest and the glands the seat of active 
oxidation, the temperature of the whole Body is kept pretty 
much the same. The skin, however, which is in direct con* 


THE HEAT OF THE BODY. 


479 


tact with external bodies, usually colder than itself, is cooler 
than the internal organs; its temperature in health is from 
36° to 37° C. (96.8-98.5° F.), being warmer in more protected 
parts, as the hollow of the armpit. In internal organs, as 
the liver and brain, the temperature is higher; about 43° C. 
(107° F.) in health. In the lungs there is a certain quantity 
of heat liberated when oxygen combines with haemoglobin, but 
this is more than counterbalanced by loss of the heat carried 
out by the expired air and that used up in evaporating the 
water carried out in the breath, so the blood returned to the 
heart by the pulmonary veins is slightly colder than that 
carried from the right side of the heart to the lungs. 

The Sources of Animal Heat. Apart from heat received 
from its surroundings in hot food and drink the sources of 
heat in the Body are twofold—direct and indirect. Heat is 
directly produced wherever oxidation is taking place; and, 
since almost invariably the chemically degrading or katabolic 
processes going on in a living organ exceed the anabolic, the 
living tissues at rest produce heat as one result of the chemical 
changes supplying them with energy for the maintenance of 
their vitality: and whenever an organ is active and its chemi¬ 
cal metamorphoses are increased it becomes hotter: a secret¬ 
ing gland or a contracting muscle is warmer than a resting 
cue, and the venous blood leaving noticeably warmer than 
the arterial supplied to it. Indirectly, heat is developed 
within the Body by the transformation of other forms of em 
crgy: mainly mechanical work, but also of electricity. All 
movements of parts of the Body which do not move it in 
space or move external objects, are transformed into heat 
within it; and the energy they represent is lost in that form. 
Every cardiac contraction sets the blood in movement, and 
this motion is for the most part turned into heat within the 
Body by friction within the blood-vessels. The same trans¬ 
formation of energy occurs with respect to the movements of 
the alimentary canal, except in so far as they expel matters 
from the Body; and every muscle in contracting has part of 
the mechanical energy expended by it turned into heat by 
friction against neighboring parts. Similarly the movements 
of cilia and of amoeboid cells are for the most part converted 
in the Body into heat. The muscles and nerves are also the 
seats of manifestations of electricity, which, though small in 
amount, for the most part do not leave the Body in that form 
but are first converted into heat. 


480 


THE HUMAN BODY,\ 


The Energy Lost by the Body in Twenty-four Hours'- 

Practically speaking, the Body only loses energy in two 
forms; as heat and mechanical work: by applying conduct¬ 
ors to different parts of its surface small amounts of elec¬ 
tricity can be carried off, but the amount is quite trivial in 
comparison with the total daily energy expenditure. During 
complete rest, that is, when no more work is done than that 
necessary for the maintenance of life, nearly all the loss takes 
the form of heat. The absolute amount of this will vary 
with the surrounding temperature and other conditions, but 
on an average a man loses, during a day of rest, 2700 calories; 
that is enough to raise 2700 kilograms (5940 lbs.) of water 
from 0° to 1° 0. (from 32° to 33 8° F.); otherwise expressed, 
this amount of heat would boil 27 kilos (59.4 lbs.) of ice-cold 
water. This does not quite represent all the energy lost by 
the Body in that time: since a small proportion is lost as 
mechanical work in moving the clothes and air by the respir¬ 
atory movements, and even by the beat of the heart, which at 
each systole pushes out the chest-wall a little and moves the 
things in contact with it. The working Body liberates and 
loses much more energy; part as mechanical work done on 
external objects, part as increased heat radiated or conducted 
from the surface, or carried off by the expired air in the 
quickened respirations. Every one knows that he feels 
warmer when he takes exercise, and this is due to the greater 
amount of blood then carried to the skin and raising for the 
time its temperature. The general temperature of the Body 
as measured in the mouth is not at all or only very slightly 
raised, however, as the greater loss of heat from the skin keeps 
the average temperature of the blood at its normal level. This 
greater loss corresponding to the greater production has been 
measured on persons enclosed in specially constructed calori¬ 
meters; and though there are considerable difficulties in the 
way of getting quite accurate results, the measurements show 
that the heat produced and lost in a day of moderate work is 
about one third greater than that in a day of rest. The fol¬ 
lowing table gives more definite numbers: 


Day of Rest. 


Day of Wo'-k. 


Heatunits (calo- 


ircitumus 

ries) produced. 


Rest 16 hrs. Sleep 8 hrs. Rest 8 hrs. Work 8 hrs. Sleep 8 hrs. 
2470 4 320 1235.2 2169.6 320. 





THE HEAT OF THE BODY. 


481 


The mechanical work done on the working day represented 
in addition an expenditure of energy of 213,344 kilogram- 
meters, which is equal to 502 calories. Of the excess heat in 
the working day, part is directly produced by the increased 
chemical changes in the quicker working heart and respira¬ 
tory muscles, and the other muscles set at work; while part 
is indirectly due to heat arising from increased friction in the 
blood-vessels as the blood is driven faster around them, and 
to friction of the various muscles used. The average cardiac 
work in twenty-four hours is about 60,000 kilogrammeters; 
that of the respiratory muscles about 14,000; and since nearly 
all of both is turned finally into heat within the Body, we 
have 74,000 kilogrammeters of energy answering to about 174 
calories (6786 Fah.-lb. units) indirectly produced in the rest¬ 
ing Body daily from these sources. 

Of 100 parts of heat lost from the resting Body, about 
74.7 are carried off in radiation or conduction from the skin. 
14.5 are carried off in evaporation from the skin. 

5.4 “ “ “ “ “ “ lungs. 

3.6 “ “ “ expired air. 

1.8 “ “ “ the excretions. 

In a day of average work, of every 100 parts of energy lost 
in any form from the Body— 

1-2 go as heat in the excreta. 

3-4 in heating the expired air. 

20-30 in evaporating water from the lungs and skin. 

60-75 in heat radiated or conducted from the surfaces and in 
external mechanical work. 

It is obvious, however, that such numbers are only rough 
approximations and must vary greatly with the temperature 
and moisture of the surrounding air, the rate of respiration, 
and other circumstances. 

The Superiority of the Body as a lATorking Machine. 

During eight hours of work we find (see table) the Body 
loses 2169.6 calories of energy as heat, and can do simul¬ 
taneously work equivalent to 502 calories. So of all the 
energv lost from it in that time about ^ may take the form of 
mechanical work; this is a very large proportion of the total 
energy expended, being a much higher percentage than that 
given bv ordinary machines. The best steam-engines can 
utilize as mechanical w r ork only about | of the total energy 
liberated in them and lost from them :n a given time, the 


482 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


remainder is transmitted directly as heat to the exterior, and 
is lost to the engine for all useful purposes. 

The Maintenance of an Average Temperature. This is 
necessary for the continuance of the life of a warm-blooded 
animal; should the temperature rise above certain limits 
chemical changes, incompatible with life, occur in the tissues; 
for example at about 49° C. (120° F.) the muscles begin to 
become rigid. On the other hand, death ensues if the Body 
be cooled down to about 19° 0. (66° F.). Hence the need 
of means for getting rid of excess heat, and of protection 
from excessive cooling. Either end may be gained in two 
ways: by altering the rate at which heat is lost or that at 
which it is produced. As regards heat-loss, by far the most 
important regulating organ is the skin: under ordinary cir¬ 
cumstances nearly 90 per cent of the total heat given oft' from 
the Body in 24 hours goes by the skin (73 by radiation and 
conduction, 14.5 by evaporation). This loss may be con¬ 
trolled— 

1. By clothing ; we naturally wear more in cold and less 
in warm weather; the effect of clothes being, of course, not 
to warm the Body but to diminish the rate at which the heat 
produced in it is lost. 

2. Increased temperature of the surrounding medium in¬ 
creases the activity of the heart and lungs. A hastened cir¬ 
culation by itself does not, as already pointed out (Chap. 
XXVI), increase the general tissue activity of the Body, or 
the oxidations occurring in it, and so, apart from the harder- 
working heart itself, does not influence the amount of heat 
liberated in the Body during a given time: but the more rapid 
blood-flow through the skin carries more of that fluid through 
this cool surface in each minute and in that way increases 
the loss of heat. The quickened respirations, too, increase the 
evaporation of water from the lungs and, thus, the loss of heat. 

3. Warmth, mainly through reflex vaso-moter actions leads 
to dilatation of the skin-vessels and cold to contraction. In 
a warm room the vessels on the surface dilate as shown by its 
redness, while in a cold atmosphere they contract and the 
skin becomes pale. But the more blood that flows through 
the skin the greater will be the heat lost from the surface— 
and vice verm. 

4. Heat induces sweating and cold checks it; the heat 
appears to act, partly, reflexly through afferent cutaneous 


THE HEAT OF THE BODY. 


483 


nerve fibres exciting the sweat-centres from which the 
secretory nerves for the sudoriparous glands arise and, partly, 
directly on those centres, as they are thrown into activity, at 
least in health, as soon as the temperature of the blood flow¬ 
ing through the spinal cord is raised. In fever of course we 
may have a high temperature with a dry non-sweating skin. 
The more there is sweat poured out, the more heat is used 
up in evaporating it and the more the Body is cooled. 

5. Our sensations induce us to add to or diminish the 
heat in the Body according to circumstances; as by cold or 
warm baths, and iced or hot drinks. 

As regards temperature-regulation by modifying the rate 
of heart production in the Body, the following points may be 
noted; on the whole, such regulation is far less important 
than that brought about by changes in the rate of loss, since 
the necessary vital work of the Body always necessitates the 
continuance of oxidative processes which liberate a tolerably 
large quantity of heat. The Body cannot therefore be cooled 
by diminishing such oxidations; nor, on the other hand, can 
it be safely warmed by largely increasing them. Still, within 
certain limits, the heat production may be controlled in 
several ways : 

1. Cold increases hunger; and increased ingestion of 
food increases bodily oxidation, as shown by the greater 
amount of carbon dioxide excreted in the hours succeeding 
a meal. This increase is probably due to the activity into 
which the digestive organs and such metabolic organs as the 
liver are thrown; hepatic-vein blood is about one degree cen¬ 
tigrade (nearly two degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than portal- 
vein blood, and during digestion much more blood flows 
through the liver. 

2. Cold inclines us to voluntary exercise; warmth to 
muscular idleness; and the more the muscles are worked the 
more heat is produced in the Body. 

3. Cold tends to produce involuntary muscular move¬ 
ments, and so increased heat production; as chattering of 
the teeth and shivering. 

4. Cold applied to the skin increases the bodily chemical 
metamorphoses and heat production. At least the tem¬ 
perature in the armpit rises at first on entering a cold bath, 
though the heat carried off from the surface soon over¬ 
balances its increased production. The phenomenon may. 


484 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


however, be explained in another way, the rise being at¬ 
tributed to a sudden diminution of loss from more exposed 
parts of the skin, dependent on contraction of the cutaneous 
arteries. In some cases, however, the temporary rise is accom¬ 
panied by an increased excretion of carbon dioxide, which 
would indicate that the surface cooling does really increase 
the oxidations of the Body. 

5. Certain drugs, as salicylic acid, and perhaps quinine, 
diminish the heat production of the Body. Their mode of 
action is still obscure. 

On the whole, however, the direct heat-regulating mech 
anisms of the Human Body itself are not very efficient, 
especially as protections against excessive cooling. Man 
needs to supplement them by the use of clothing, fuel, and 
exercise. 

Local Temperatures. Although, by the means above 
described, a wonderfully uniform bodily temperature is 
maintained, and by the circulating blood all parts are kept 
at nearly the same warmth, variations in both respects do 
occur. The arrangements for equalization are not by any 
means fully efficient. External parts, as the skin, the lungs 
(which are really external in the sense of being in contact 
with the air), the mouth, and the nose chambers, are always 
cooler than internal; and even all parts of the skin have not 
the same temperature, such hollows as the armpit being 
warmer than more exposed regions. On the other hand, a 
secreting gland or a working muscle becomes warmer, for 
the time, than the rest of the Body, because more heat is 
liberated in it than is carried off by the blood flowing 
through. In such organs the venous blood leaving is warmer 
than the arterial coming to them; while the reverse is the 
case with parts, like the skin, in which the blood is cooled. 
An organ colder than the blood is of course warmed by an 
increase in its circulation, as seen in the local rise of temper¬ 
ature in the skin of the face in blushing. 

Thermogenic Nerves. All nerves, such as motor or 
secretory, which can throw working tissues into activity are 
in a certain sense thermogenic nerves, since they excite in¬ 
creased oxidation and heat production in the parts under 
their control. A true, purely thermogenic nerve would be 
one which increased the heat production in a tissue without 
otherwise throwing it into activity; and whether such exist 


THE HEAT OF THE BODY. 


485 


is still undecided. Certain phenomena of disease, however, 
seem to render their existence probable. If we return for a 
moment to our former comparison of the working Body to 
a steam-engine, such nerves might be regarded as agencies 
increasing its rate of rusting without setting it at work. 
The oxidation of the iron would develop some heat, but by 
processes useless to the steam-engine, although such are, in 
moderation, essential to living cells; the vitality of these, 
even when they rest, seems to necessitate a constant, if small, 
breaking down of their substance. In an amoeboid cell no 
doubt such processes occur quite independently of the ner¬ 
vous system; out in more differentiated tissues they may be 
controlled by it. Just as a muscle does not normally con¬ 
tract unless excited through its nerve, although a white 
blood-corpuscle does, so may the natural nutritive processes 
of the muscle-fibre in its resting condition be dependent on 
the nerves going to it. If these be abnormally excited the 
muscle will break down its’ protoplasm faster than it con¬ 
structs it, and consequently waste; at the same time the 
increased chemical degradation of its substance will elevate 
its temperature. Febrile conditions, in which many tissues 
waste, without any unusual manifestation of their normal 
physiological activity, would thus be readily accounted for 
as due to superexcitation of the thermogenic nerves and 
nerve-centre. 

The condition of fever or pyrexia, as an abnormally high 
temperature is named, could conceivably be brought about by 
increased heat production, decreased heat loss, or both; or 
by a greater increase of production than of loss. Direct ex¬ 
periments on animals prove that there is always increased 
production of heat, in febrile diseases. This is shown by the 
fact that the animal uses more oxygen and gives off more 
carbon dioxide in a given time than when in health. It also 
usually gives off more heat, but not enough to compensate for 
the increase of oxidative processes going on in its body, and 
so its temperature rises. The regulating mechanism which 
m health keeps heat production and heat dissipation propor¬ 
tionate is out of gear. As regards the increased heat formation 
in pvrexial conditions, there is some reason to believe that it 
is usually due to excitation by morbid products of thermogenic 
centres lying in the corpora striata or optic thalami. Prick¬ 
ing those regions of the brain of an animal causes greatly in- 


486 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


creased heat formation in its body. This has been interpreted 
either as due to the excitation of thermogenic nerve-centres 
which then stir up increased katabolisms in the tissues or to 
injury and paralysis of inhibitory centres which normally 
hold tissue metabolisms in check. The fact that a similar 
result may be obtained by electrical stimulation of this region 
of the brain is in favor of the excitation theory, but the possi¬ 
bility of the existence also of febrile paralysis of nerve-cells 
which normally inhibit a heat-production centre should be 
borne in mind. 

Clothing. While the majority of other warm-blooded 
animals have coats of their own, formed of hairs or feathers, 
over most of man’s Body his capillary coating is merely rudi¬ 
mentary and has lost nearly all physiological importance as a 
protection from cold; except in tropical regions he has to 
protect himself by artificial garments, which his aesthetic 
sense has led him to utilize also for purposes of adornment. 
Here, however, we must confine ourselves to clothes from a 
physiological point of view. In civilized societies every one 
is required to cover most of his Body with something, and 
the question is what is the best covering; the answer will 
vary, of course, with the climatic conditions of the country 
dwelt in. In warm countries, clothing, in general terms, 
should allow free radiation or conduction of heat from the 
surface; in cold it should do the reverse; and in temperate 
climates, with varying temperatures, it should vary with the 
season. If the surface of the Body be exposed so that cur¬ 
rents of air can freely traverse it much more heat will be 
carried off (under those usual conditions in which the air is 
cooler than the skin) than if a stationary layer of air be main¬ 
tained in contact with the surface. As every one knows, a 
“ draught ” cools much faster than air of the same tempera¬ 
ture not in motion. All clothing, therefore, tends to keep 
up the temperature of the Body by checking the renewal of 
the layer of air in contact with it. Apart from this, how¬ 
ever, clothes fall into two great groups: those which are 
good, and those which are bad, conductors of heat. The 
former allow changes in the external temperature to cool or 
heat rapidly the air stratum in actual contact with the Body, 
while the latter only permit these changes to act more slowly. 
Of the materials used for clothes, linen is a good conductor; 


THE HEAT OF THE BODY. 


487 


calico not quite so good; and silk, wool, and fur are bad con¬ 
ductors. 

Whenever the surface of the Body is suddenly chilled 
the skin-vessels are contracted and those of internal parts 
reflexly dilated; hence internal organs tend to become con¬ 
gested / this within limits is a protective physiological pro¬ 
cess, but if excessive it readily passes into the diseased state 
known as inflammation. When hot, therefore, the most 
unadvisable thing to do is to sit in a draught, throw off the 
clothing, or in other ways to strive to get suddenly cooled. 
Moreover, while in the American summer it is tolerably safe 
to wear good-conducting garments, and few people take cold 
then, this is by no means safe in the spring or autumn, when 
the temperature of the air is apt to vary considerably within 
the course of a day. A person going out, clad only for a 
warm morning, may have to return in a very much colder 
evening; and if his clothes be not such as to prevent a sud¬ 
den surface chill, will get off lightly if he only “ take ” one 
of the colds so prevalent at those seasons. In the great 
majority of cases, no doubt, he suffers nothing worse, but 
persons, especially of the female sex, often thus acquire far 
more serious diseases. When sudden changes of temperature 
are at all probable, even if the prevailing weather be warm, 
the trunk of the Body should be always protected by some 
tolerably close-fitting garment of non-conducting material. 
Those whose skins are irritated by anything but linen should, 
wear immediately outside the under-garments a jacket of 
silken or woollen material. In mid-winter comparatively few 
people take cold, because all then wear thick and noncon¬ 
ducting clothing of some kind. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


SENSATION AND SENSE-ORGANS. 

The Subjective Functions of the Nervous System. 

Changes in many parts of our Bodies are accompanied or 
followed by those states of consciousness which we call sen¬ 
sations . All such sensitive parts are in connection, direct 
or indirect, with the brain, by certain afferent nerve-fibres 
called sensory . Since all feeling is lost in any region of the 
Body when this connecting path is severed, it is clear that 
all sensations, whatever their primary exciting cause, are 
finally dependent on conditions of the central nervous system. 
Hitherto we have studied this as its activities are revealed 
through movements which it excites or prevents; we have 
seen it, directly or reflexly, cause muscles to contract, glands 
to secrete, or the pulsations of the heart to cease; we have 
viewed it objectively, as a motion-regulating apparatus. Now 
we have to turn to another side and consider it (or parts of 
it) as influencing the states of consciousness of its possessor: 
this study of the subjective activities of the nervous system is 
one of much greater difficulty. 

It may be objected that considerations concerning states 
of feeling have no proper place in a treatise on Anatomy 
and Physiology; that, since we cannot form the beginning 
of a conception how a certain state of the nervous system 
causes the feeling redness, another the feeling blueness, and 
a third the emotion anger, all examination of mental phe¬ 
nomena should be excluded from the sciences dealing with 
the structure and properties of living things. But, although 
we cannot imagine how a nervous state ( neurosis ) gives rise 
to a conscious state (psychosis), we do know this, that dis¬ 
tinct phenomena of consciousness never come under our 
observation apart from a nervous system, and so are pre¬ 
sumably, in some way, endowments of it; we are, therefore, 
justified in calling them properties of the nervous system; 

488 


SENSATION AND SENSE-ORGANS. 


489 


and their examination, especially with respect to what nerve- 
parts are concerned with different mental states, and what 
changes in the former are associated with given phenomena 
in the latter, forms properly a part of Physiology. Whether * 
masses of protoplasm, before the differentiation of definite 
nerve-tissues, possess some ill-defirfed sort of consciousness, 
as they possess an indefinite contractility before they have 
been modified into muscular fibres, may for the present be 
left undecided: though those who accept the doctrine of 
evolution will be inclined to assent to the proposition. 

While, however, the physiologist has a right to be heard 
on questions relating to our mental faculties, it is neverthe¬ 
less true that many laws of thought have been established 
concerning which our present knowledge of the laws of the 
nervous system gives us no clue; the science of Psychology 
has thus a well-founded claim to an independent existence. 
But, in so far as its results are confined merely to the succes¬ 
sions and connections of mental states, as established by 
observation, they are merely descriptions, and not explana¬ 
tions in a scientific sense: we know that so many mental phe¬ 
nomena have necessary material antecedents and concomi¬ 
tants in nervous changes, that we are justified in believing 
that all have such, and in continuing to seek for them. We 
do not know at all how an electric current sent round a bar 
of soft iron makes it magnetic; we only know that the one 
change is accompanied by the other; but we say we have 
explained the magnetism of a piece of iron if we have found 
an electric current circulating around it. Similarly, we do 
not know how a nervous change causes a mental state, but 
we have not explained the mental state until we nave found 
the nervous state associated with it and how that nervous 
state was produced. 

As yet it is only with respect to some of the simplest 
states of consciousness that we know much of the necessary 
physiological antecedents, and among these our sensations 
are the best investigated. As regards such mental phenom¬ 
ena as the Association of Ideas and Memory, physiology 
can give us some light; but so far as others, such as the Will 
and the Emotions, are concerned, it has at present little to 
offer. The phenomena of Sensation, therefore, occupy at 
present a much larger portion of physiological works than 
all other mental facts put together. 


490 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Common Sensation and Organs of Special Sense. A 

sensory nerve is one which, when stimulated, arouses, or may 
arouse, a sensation in its possessor. The stimulant is in all 
cases some form of motion, molar (e.g., mechanical pressure) 
or molecular (as ethereal vibrations or chemical changes). 
Since all our nerves lie within our Bodies as circumscribed 
by the skin, and are excited within them, one might a prion 
be inclined to suppose that the cause of all sensations would 
appear to be within our Bodies themselves; that the thing 
felt would be a modified portion of the feeler. This is the 
case with regard to many sensations; a headache, toothache, 
or earache gives us no idea of any external object; it merely 
suggests to each of us a particular state of a sensitive portion 
of myself. As regards many sensations, however, this is not 
so; they suggest to us external causes, to properties of which, 
and not to states of our Bodies, we ascribe them; and so they 
lead us to the conception of an external universe. A knife 
laid on the skin produces changes in it which lead us to 
think not of a state of our skin, but of states of some object 
outside the skin; we believe we feel a cold heavy hard thing 
in contact with it. Nevertheless we have no sensory nerves 
going into the knife and informing us directly of its condi¬ 
tion; what we really feel are the modifications of our Body 
produced by it, although we irresistibly think of them as 
properties of the knife—of some object that is no part of the 
Body, and not of them as states of the latter. Let now the 
knife cut through the skin; we feel no more knife, but ex¬ 
perience pain, which we think of as a condition of ourselves. 
We do not say the knife is painful, but that our finger is, and 
yet we have, so far as sensation goes, as much reason to call 
the knife painful as cold. Applied one way it produced 
local changes arousing a sensation of cold, and in another 
local changes causing a sensation of pain. Nevertheless in 
the one case we speak of the cold as being in the knife, and 
in the other of the pain as being in the finger. 

Sensitive parts, such as the surface of the skin, through 
which we get, or believe we get, information about outer 
things, are of far more intellectual value to us than sensitive 
parts, such as the subcutaneous tissue into which the knife 
may cut, which give us only sensations referred to conditions 
of our Bodies. The former are called Sense-organs proper, 


SENSATION AND SENSE-ORGANS. 


491 


or Organs of Special Sense; the latter are sensitive parts, 
or Organs of Common Sensation. 

The Peripheral Reference of our Sensations The fact 
that we refer certain sensations to external causes is only 
one case of a more general law, in accordance with which 
we do not ascribe our sensations, as regards their locality, to 
the brain, where the neurosis is accompanied by the sensa¬ 
tion, but to a peripheral part. With respect to the brain, 
other parts of the Body are external objects as much as the 
rest of the material universe, yet we locate the majority of 
our common sensations at the places where the sensory 
nerves concerned are irritated, and not in the brain. Even 
if a nerve-trunk be stimulated in the middle of its course, 
we refer the resulting sensation to its outer endings. A blow 
on the inside of the elbow-joint, injuring the ulnar nerve, 
produces not only a local pain, but a sense of tingling 
ascribed to the fingers to which the ends of the fibres go. 
Persons with amputated limbs have feelings in their fingers 
and toes long after they have been lost, if the nerve-trunks 
in the stump be irritated. To explain such facts we must 
trench on the ground of Psychology, and so they cannot be 
fully discussed here; but they are commonly ascribed to the 
results of experience. The events of life have taught us that 
in the great majority of instances the sensory impulses which 
excite a given tactile sensation, for example, have acted upon 
the tip of a finger. The sensation goes when the finger is 
removed, and returns when it is replaced; and the eye con¬ 
firms the contact of the external object with the finger-tip 
when we get the tactile sensation in question. We thus 
come firmly to associate a particular region of the skin with 
a given sensation, and whenever afterwards the nerve-fibres 
coming from the finger are stimulated, no matter where in 
their course, we ascribe the origin of the sensation to some 
thing acting on the finger tip. 

The Differences between Sensations. In both groups 
of sensations, those derived through organs of special sense 
and those due to organs of common sensation, we distinguish 
kinds which are absolutely distinct for our consciousness, 
and not comparable mentally. We can never get confused 
between a sight, a sound, and a touch, nor between pain, 
hunger, and nausea; nor can we compare them with one 
another: each is sui generis. The fundamental difference 


492 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


which thus separates one sensation from another is its 
modality. Sensations of the same modality may differ; but 
they shade imperceptibly into one another, and are com¬ 
parable between themselves in two ways. First, as regards 
quality: while a high and a low pitched note are both 
auditory sensations, they are nevertheless different and yet 
intelligibly comparable; and so are blue, purple, and red ob¬ 
jects. In the second place, sensations of the same modality are 
distinguishable and comparable as to amount or intensity: we 
readily recognize and compare a loud and a weak sound of 
the same pitch; a bright and feeble light of the same color; 
an acute and a slight pain of the same general character. 
Our sensations thus differ in the three aspects of modality, 
quality within the same modality , and intensity. Certain 
sensations also differ in what is known as the “ local signs” 
a difference by which we tell a touch on one part of the skin 
from a similar touch on another; or an object exciting one 
part of the eye from an object like it, but in a different loca¬ 
tion in space and exciting another part of the visual surface. 

As regards modality, we commonly distinguish five senses, 
those of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell; to these, tem¬ 
perature must be added. The varieties of common sensation 
are also several; for example, pain, hunger, satiety, thirst, 
nausea, malaise , hien etre (“ feeling good "), fatigue. The 
muscular sense stands on the intermediate line between 
special and common sensations; we gather by it how much 
our various muscles are contracted: and so learn the position 
of various parts of the Body, on the one hand, and the re¬ 
sistance opposed to bodily movement by external objects, on 
the other. In fact, we cannot draw a sharp line between the 
special senses and common sensations: all the Body, we con¬ 
clude from observations on the lower animals, is, at an early 
stage of its development, sensitive; very soon its cells sepa¬ 
rate themselves into an outer layer exposed to the action of 
external forces and an inner layer protected from them: and 
some of the former cells become especially sensitive. From 
them, as development proceeds, some are separated and 
buried beneath the surface to become the brain and spinal 
cord; of those which remain superficial, some are modified 
so that they (in the eye) become especially excited by ethereal 
vibrations; others (in the ear) become especially responsive 
to sound vibrations; others to slight chemical changes (in 


SENSATION AND SENSE-ORGANS. 


493 


mouth and nose), and others (in the skin) to variations in 
pressure or temperature. 

All our sensations are thus modifications of one common 
primary sensibility, represented by that of the skin, or rather 
by the primitive representative of the skin in such an animal 
as the Hydra (see Zoology). The cutaneous sensations, being 
less differentiated, shade off more readily into the common 
sensibility of the other living tissues than do the activities of 
the highly differentiated cells in the eye and ear. We find, 
accordingly, that while a powerful pressure or a high tem¬ 
perature acting on the skin readily arouses a sensation of 
pain, that this is not the case with the more specialized visual 
and auditory organs. Their super-excitement may be dis¬ 
agreeable, but never passes into pain, in the ordinary sense 
of the word. Similarly the special skin sensations, touch 
and temperature, may sometimes be confounded, while a. 
sound and a sight cannot be : the modality of the less modi¬ 
fied skin-senses is less complete. 

The study of comparative anatomy and development 
shows that the irritable parts of our sense-organs are but 
special differentiations of the primary external layer of cells 
which covered the Body when it was very young. Some of 
these cells become nerve end-organs in the eye, others end- 
organs in the ear, and so on; while others, less changed, re¬ 
main in the skin as organs of touch and temperature; and 
so, from a general exterior surface responding equally readily 
to many external natural forces, we get a surface modified so 
that its various parts respond with different degrees of read¬ 
iness to different external forces; and these modified parts 
constitute the essential portions of our organs of special sense. 
Every sense organ thus comes to have a special relationship to 
some one natural force or form of energy—is a specially 
irritable mechanism by which such a force is enabled to excite 
sensory nerves; and is, moreover, commonly supplemented by 
arrangements which, in the ordinary circumstances of life, 
prevent other forces from stimulating the nerves connected 
with it. Not all natural forces have sense-organs with ref¬ 
erence to them developed in the Human Body; for example, 
we have no organ standing to electrical changes in the same 
relation that the eye does to light or the ear to sound. 

The Essential Structure of a Sense-organ. In every 
sense-organ the fundamental part is one or more end-organs , 


494 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


which are highly irritable tissues (p. 31), so constructed and 
so placed as to be normally acted on by some one of the 
modes of motion met with in the external world. A sensory 
apparatus requires in addition at least a brain-centre and a 
sensory nerve-fibre connecting this with the terminal appa¬ 
ratus: but one commonly finds accessory parts added. In 
the eye, e.g., we have arrangements for bringing to a focus 
the light rays which are to act on the end organs of the 
nerve-fibres; and in the ear are found similar subsidiary 
parts, to conduct sonorous vibrations to the end apparatus of 
the auditory nerve. 

Seeing and hearing are the two most specialized senses; 
the stimuli usually arousing them are peculiar and quite dis¬ 
tinct from the group of general nerve stimuli (Chap. XIII), 
while Jhose most frequently, or naturally, acting upon our 
other sense-organs are not so peculiar; they are forces 
which act as general nerve stimuli when directly applied to 
nerve-fibres. The end-organs, however, as already pointed 
out, so increase the sensitiveness of the parts containing 
them that degrees of change in the exciting forces, which 
would be totally unable to directly stimulate the nerve-fibres, 
are appreciated. These terminal apparatuses are therefore 
as truly mechanisms enabling changes, which would not 
otherwise stimulate nerves, to excite them, as are the end- 
organs in the eye or ear. 

The Cause of the Modality of our Sensations. Seeing 
that the external forces usually exciting our different sensa¬ 
tions differ, and that the sensations do also, we might at first 
be inclined to believe that the latter difference depended on 
the former: that brightness differed from loudness because 
light was different from sound. In other words, we are apt 
to think that each sensation derives its specific character 
from some property of its external physical antecedent, and 
that our sensations answer in some way to. and represent 
more or less accurately, properties of the forms of energy 
arousing them. It is, however, quite easy to show that we 
have no sufficient logical warrant for such a belief. Light 
falling into the eye causes a sensation of luminosity, a feel¬ 
ing belonging to the visual group or modality; and, since 
usually nothing else excites such feelings and light entering 
the healthy eye always does, we come to believe that the 
physical agent light is something like our sensation of 


SENSATION AND SENSE-ORGANS 


495 


luminosity. But, as we have already seen, no matter 
how we stimulate the optic nerve we still get visual sensa¬ 
tions; close the eyes and press with a finger-nail on one eye¬ 
lid; a sensation of touch is aroused where the finger meets 
the skin; but the pressure on the eyeball distorts it and 
stimulates the optic nerve-fibres in it also, and the result is 
a luminous patch seen in front of the eye in such a position 
as a bright body must occupy in space to radiate light to the 
stimulated part of the expansion of the optic nerve. Finding, 
then, the same kind of sensation, a visual one, produced by 
the totally different causes, pressure and light, we are led to 
doubt if the differences of modality in our sensations depend 
upon the differences of the natural forces arousing them; 
and this doubt is strengthened when we find still other forces 
giving rise to visual sensations. But then, since light 
and pressure, electricity and cutting, all cause visual sensa¬ 
tions, we have no valid reason for supposing that light, more 
than either of the others, is really in any way like our sensa¬ 
tion of light: or that sight-feeling differs from sound-feeling 
because objectively light differs from sound. The eye is an 
organ specially set apart to be excited by light, and accord¬ 
ingly so fixed as to have its nerve-fibres far more often ex¬ 
cited by that form of force than by any other; but the fact 
that light sensations can be otherwise aroused shows plainly 
that their kind or character has nothing directly to do with 
any property of light. Just as by pinching or heating or 
galvanizing a motor nerve we can make the muscles attached 
to it contract, and the contraction has nothing in common 
with the excitant, so the visual sensation, as such, is inde¬ 
pendent of the stimulus arousing it and, of itself, tells us 
nothing concerning the kind of stimulus which has operated. 

Differences in kind between external forces being thus 
eliminated as possible causes of the modalities of our sensa¬ 
tions, we next naturally fall back upon differences in the 
sense-organs themselves. They do undoubtedly differ both 
in gross and microscopic structure, and the fact that pressure 
on the closed eye arouses a touch-feeling where the skin is 
compressed, and a sight-feeling where optic nerve-fibres are, 
might well be due to the fact that a peripheral touch-organ 
was different from a peripheral sight-organ, and the same 
force might therefore produce totally different effects on 
them and so cause different kinds of feelings. However, 


496 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


here also closer examination shows that we must seeK farther. 
Sensation is not produced in a sense-organ, but far away 
from it in the brain; the organ is merely an apparatus for 
generating nervous impulses. If the optic nerves be divided, 
no matter how perfect the eyeballs, no amount of light will 
arouse visual sensations; if the spinal cord be cut in the 
middle of the back no pressure on the feet will cause a tactile 
or other feeling; though the skin, and its nerves and the 
lower half of the spinal cord be all intact. In all cases we 
find that if the nerve-paths between a sense-organ and the 
brain be severed no stimulation of the organ will call forth a 
sensation. The final production of this clearly depends, 
then, on something occurring in the brain, and so the kind 
of a sensation is presumably dependent upon brain events 
rather than on occurrences in sense-organs. Still it might 
be that something in the sense-organ caused one sensa¬ 
tion to differ from another. Each organ might excite the 
brain in a different way and cause a different sensation, and 
so our sensations differ because our sense organs do. Such 
a view is, however, negatived by observations which show 
that perfectly characteristic sensations can be felt in the 
absence of the sense-organs through which they are normally 
excited. Persons whose eyeballs have been removed by the 
surgeon, or completely destroyed by disease, have frequently 
afterwards definite and unmistakable visual sensations, quite 
as characteristic as those which they had while still possess¬ 
ing the visual end organs. The tactile sensations felt in am¬ 
putated limbs, already referred to, afford another example 
of the same fact. The persons still feel things touching 
their legs or lying between their long-lost toes; and the sen¬ 
sations are distinctly tactile and not in any way less different 
from visual or auditory sensations than are the touch-feelings 
following stimulation of those parts of the skin w r hich are still 
possessed. It is, then, clear that the modality of our sensa¬ 
tions is to be sought deeper than in properties of the end- 
organs of the nerves of each sense. 

Properties of external forces and properties of periph¬ 
eral nerve-organs being excluded as causes of differences in 
kind of sensation, we come next to the sensory nerve-fibres 
themselves. Is it because optic nerve-fibres are different 
from auditory nerve-fibres that luminous sensations are dif¬ 
ferent from sonorous ? This question must be answered in 


SENSATION AND SENSE-ORGANS. 


497 


the negative, for we have already seen reason to believe 
that all nerve-fibres are alike in essential structure and that 
their properties are everywhere the same; that all they do is 
to transmit “nervous impulses” when excited, and that, no 
matter what the excitant, these impulses are molecular move¬ 
ments, always alike in kind, though they may differ in 
amount and in rate of succession. Since, then, all that the 
optic nerve does is to send nervous impulses to the brain, 
and all that the auditory and gustatory and tactile and olfac¬ 
tory nerve-fibres do is the same, and these impulses are all 
alike in kind, we cannot explain the difference in quality of 
visual and other sensations by any differences in property of 
the nerve-trunks concerned, any more than we could attempt 
to explain the facts that, in one case, an electric current sent 
through a thin platinum wire heats it, and, in another, sent 
through a solution of a salt decomposes it, by assuming that 
the-different results depend on differences in the conducting 
copper wires, which may be absolutely alike in the two cases. 

We are thus driven to conclude that our sensations pri¬ 
marily differ because different central nerve-organs in the 
brain are concerned in their production. That just as an 
efferent nerve-fibre will, when stimulated, cause a secretion if 
it go to a gland-cell, and a contraction if it go to a muscle- 
fibre, so an optic nerve-fibre, carrying impulses to one brain 
apparatus and exciting it, will cause a visual sensation, and a 
gustatory nerve-fibre, connected with another brain-centre, a 
taste sensation. In other words, our kinds of sensation 
depend fundamentally on the properties of our own cerebral 
nervous system. For each special sense we have a nervous 
apparatus with its peripheral terminal organs, its nerve-fibres, 
and its brain-centres; and the excitement of this apparatus, no 
matter in what way, causes a sensation of a given modality, 
determined by the properties of its central portion. Usually 
the apparatus is excited by one particular force acting first 
on its peripheral organs, but it may be aroused by stimulat¬ 
ing its nerve-fibres directly or, as in certain diseased states 
(delirium), or under the action of certain drugs, by direct 
excitation of the centres. The sensations of dreams, fre¬ 
quently so vivid, and hallucinations, are also probably in 
many cases due to direct excitation of the central organs of 
sensory apparatuses, though no doubt also often due to periph¬ 
eral stimulation. But no matter how or where the appa. 


4S8 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ratus is excited, provided a sensation is produced it is always 
of the modality of that sense apparatus. 

While in the more specialized senses the modality of the 
sensation can be ascribed only to brain properties (so that 
we may be pretty sure that a man, the inner end of whose 
optic nerve was in physiological continuity with the outer 
end of his auditory, and the inner end of his auditory with 
the outer end of his optic, would hear a picture and see a 
symphony), yet, conceivably, differences in the rhythm or 
intensity of afferent nervous impulses might cause differ¬ 
ences in modality in less differentiated senses. Until quite 
recently it has been considered possible that tactile and tem¬ 
perature sensations were but extremes of one general kind of 
feeling; that they were of the same “ modality;” and com¬ 
parable, for example, to the sensations of yellow and blue in 
the visual set of feelings. This view has now been definitely 
proved to be inadmissible (Chap. XXXV). The points of*the 
skin which arouse in us the sensations of touch, heat, and cold 
are all distinct; each one when stimulated gives rise to only 
one kind of sensation, if any; and always the same kind. A 
heavy pressure, gradually increased, arouses sensations which 
pass imperceptibly from touch to pain, and this result may 
be due to the fact that regular and orderly afferent impulses, 
determined through tactile nerve-endings, excite the centre 
in one way; while irregular, disorderly, and violent impulses, 
originated when the pressure is great enough to directly 
excite nerve-trunks beneath the skin, may cause a different 
sensation; much as musical notes properly combined may 
cause pleasure, but all clashed together may cause suffering, 
although the same brain-centres are stimulated in the two 
cases. The pain from a heavy weight may, however, be due 
to the fact that it excites a different set of nerve-fibres than 
those connected with tactile feeling, and gives rise to impulses 
which excite new centres, the modality of which is a pain 
sensation so great as to cloak concomitant touch sensations. 

However differences in nervous rhythm may account for 
minor differences in sensation, it remains clear that the 
characters of our sensations are creations of our own organ¬ 
ism; they depend on properties of our Bodies and noton 
properties of external things, except in so far as these may 
or may not be adapted to arouse our different sensory appa¬ 
ratuses to activity. From the kind of the sensation we can- 


SENSATION AND SENSE-ORGANS, 


499 


not, therefore, argue as to the nature of the excitant: we 
have no more warrant for supposing that light is like our 
sensation of light than that the knife that cuts us is like our 
sensation of pain. All that we know with certainty is states 
of our own consciousness, and although from these we form 
working hypotheses as to an external universe, yet, granting 
it, we have no means of acquiring any real knowledge as to 
the properties of things about us. What we want to know, 
however, for the practical purposes of life is, not what things 
are, but how to use them for our advantage, or to prevent 
them from acting to our disadvantage; and our senses en¬ 
able us to do this sufficiently well. 

The Psycho-Physical Law. Although our sensations 
are, in modality or kind, independent of the force exciting 
them, they are not so in degree or intensity, at least within 
certain limits. We cannot measure the amount of a sensa¬ 
tion and express it in foot-pounds or calories, but we can get 
a sort of unit by determining how small a difference in sensa¬ 
tion can be perceived. Supposing this smallest perceptible 
difference to be constant within the range of the same sense 
(which is not proved), it is found that it is produced by dif¬ 
ferent amounts of stimuli, measured objectively as forces; 
and that there exists in some cases a relation between the two 
which can be expressed in numbers. The increase of stimu¬ 
lus necessary to produce the smallest perceptible change in a 
sensation is 'proportional to the strength of the stimulus 
already acting; for example, the heavier a pressure already 
acting on the skin the more must it be increased or dimin¬ 
ished in order that the increase or diminution may be felt. 
Expressed in another way the facts may be put thus: sup¬ 
pose three degrees of stimulation to bear to one another ob¬ 
jectively the ratios 10, 100, 1000, then their subjective ef¬ 
fects, or the amounts of sensation aroused by them, will be 
respectively as 1, 2, 3 ; in other words, the sensation increases 
proportionately to the logarithm of the strength of the stimu¬ 
lus. Examples of this, which is known as “ Weber’s ” or 
“ Fechner’s psycho-physical law” will be hereafter pointed 
out, and are readily observable in daily life; we have, for 
example, a luminous sensation of certain intensity wheif a 
lighted candle is brought into a dark room; this sensation is 
not doubled when a second candle is brought in; and is 
hardly affected at all by a third. The law is only true, how- 


500 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


«ver (and then but approximately), for sensations of medium 
intensity; it is applicable, for example, to light sensations of 
all degrees between those aroused by the light of a candle 
and ordinary clear daylight: but it is not true for luminosi¬ 
ties so feeble as only to be seen at all with difficulty, or so 
bright as to be dazzling. 

Besides their variations in intensity, dependent on varia¬ 
tions in the strength of the stimulus, our sensations also vary 
with the irritability of the sensory apparatus itself; which is 
not constant from time to time or from person to person. 
In the above statements the condition of the sense-organ and 
its nervous connections is presumed to remain the same 
throughout. 

Perceptions. In every sensation we have to carefully 
distinguish between the pure sensation and certain judg¬ 
ments founded upon it; we have to distinguish between what 
we really feel and what we think we feel; and very often 
firmly believe we do feel when we do not. 

The most important of these judgments is that which 
leads us to ascribe certain sensations, those aroused through 
organs of special sense, to external objects—that outer refer¬ 
ence of our sensations which leads us to form ideas concern¬ 
ing the existence, form, position, and properties of external 
things. Such representations as these, founded on our senses, 
are called perceptions. Since these always imply some 
mental activity in addition to a mere feeling, their full dis¬ 
cussion belongs to the domain of Psychology. Physiology, 
however, is concerned with them so far as it can determine 
the conditions of stimulation and neurosis under which a 
given mental representation concerning a sensation is made. 
It is quite certain that we can feel nothing but states of our¬ 
selves, but, as already pointed out, we have no hesitation in 
saying we feel a hard or a cold, a rough or smooth body. 
When we look at a distant object we usually make no demur 
to saying that we perceive it. What we really feel is, how¬ 
ever, the change produced by it in our eyes. There are no 

parts of our Bodies reaching to a tree or a house a mile off_ 

and yet we seem to feel all the while that we are looking at 
the tree or the house and feeling them, and not merely ex¬ 
periencing modifications of our own eyes or brains. When 
reading we feel that what we really see is the book; and yet 


SENSATION AND SENSE-ORGANS. 501 

the existence of the book is a judgment founded on a state 
of our Body, which alone is what we truly feel. 

We have the same experience in other cases, for example 
with regard to touch. 

Hairs are quite insensible, but are imbedded in the sensi¬ 
tive skin, which is excited when they are moved. But 
if the tip of a hair be touched by some external object we 
believe we feel the contact at its insensible end, and not in 
the sensitive skin at its root. So, the hard parts of the teeth 
are insensible; yet when we rub them together we refer the 
seat of the sensation aroused to the points where they touch 
one another, and not to the sensitive parts around the sockets 
where the sensory nerve impulse is really started. 

Still more, we may refer tactile sensations, not merely to 
the distal ends of insensible bodies implanted in the skin, 
but to the far ends of things which are not parts of our 
Bodies at all; for instance, the distant end of a rod held 
between the finger and a table while the finger is moved a little 
from side to side. We then believe we feel touch or pressure 
in two places; one where the rod touches our finger, and the 
other where it comes in contact with the table. A blind 
man gropes his way along by feeling at the end of his stick. 
If the rod is attached immovably to the table we feel only 
its end next the finger. If we could fix it immovably on the 
finger while the other end was movable on the table, we 
would lose the sensation at the finger and refer the sensa¬ 
tion of pressure to where the rod touched the table. When a 
tooth is touched with a rod we only feel the contact at its 
end, unless it is loose in its socket; and then we get two 
sensations on touching its free end with a foreign body. 

This irresistible mental tendency to refer certain of our 
states of feeling to causes outside of our Bodies, and either in 
contact with them or separated from them by a certain space, 
is known as the phenomenon of the extrinsic reference of our 
sensations. The discussion of its origin belongs properly to 
Psychology, and it will suffice here to point out that it seems 
largely to depend on the fact that the sensations extrinsically 
referred can be modified by movements of our Bodies. 
Hunger, thirst, and toothache all remain the same whether 
we turn to the right or left, or move away from the place we 
are standing in. But a sound is altered. We may find that 
in a certain position of the head it is heard more by the 


502 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


right ear than the left; but on turning round the reverse is 
the case; and half way round the loudness in each ear is the 
same. Hence we are led, by mental laws outside of the 
physiological domain, to suspect that its cause is not in our 
Body, but outside of it; and depends not on a condition of 
the Body but on something else- And this is confirmed 
when going in one direction we find the sound increased,, 
and in the other that it is diminished. This implies that we 
have a knowledge of our movements, and this we gain 
through the muscular sense. It constitutes the reactive side 
of our sensory life, associated with the changes we produce 
in external things; and is correlated and contrasted with the 
passive side, in which other things produce sensations by act¬ 
ing upon us. 

As regards our common sensations we find something of 
the same kind. The more readily they can be modified by 
movement the more definitely do we localize them in space, 
though in this case within the Body instead of outside it. 
Hunger and nausea can be altered by pressure on the pit of 
the stomach; thirst by moistening the throat with water; 
the desire for oxygen (respiration-hunger) by movements of 
the chest; and so we more or less definitely ascribe these 
sensations to conditions of those parts of the Body. Other 
general sensations, as depression, anxiety, and so on, are not 
modifiable by any particular movement, and so appear to us 
rather as mental states, pure and simple, than bodily sensa¬ 
tions. 

Sensory Illusions. “ I must believe my own eyes” and 
“ we can’t always believe our senses ” are two expressions 
frequently heard, and each expressing a truth. No doubt a 
sensation in itself is an absolute incontrovertible fact: if I 
feel.redness or hotness I do feel it, and that is an end of the 
matter: but if I go beyond the fact of my having a certain 
sensation and conclude from it as to properties of something 
else—if I form a judgment from my sensation —I may be 
totally wrong; and in so far be unable to believe my eyes or 
skin. Such judgments are almost inextricably woven up 
w T ith many of our sensations, and so closely that we cannot 
readily separate the two; not even when we know that the 
judgment is erroneous. 

For example, the moon when rising or setting appears 
bigger than when high in the heavens—we seem to feel 


SENSATION AND SENSE-0IiGANS. 


503 


directly that it arouses more sensation, and yet we know cer¬ 
tainly that it does not. With a body of a given brightness 
the amount of change produced in the end organs of the eye 
will depend on the size of the image formed in the eye, pro¬ 
vided the same part of its sensory surface is acted upon. 
Now the size of this image depends on the distance of the 
object; it is smaller the farther off it is and greater the 
nearer, and measurements show that the area of" the sensitive 
surface affected by the image of the rising moon is no larger 
than that affected by it when overhead. Why then do we, 
even after we know this, see it bigger? The reason is that 
when the moon is near the horizon we imagine, unconsciously 
and irresistibly, that it is farther off; even astronomers who 
know perfectly well that it is not, cannot help forming this 
unconscious and erroneous judgment—and to them the moon 
appears in consequence larger when near the horizon, just as 
it does to less well-informed mortals. In fact we have a con¬ 
ception of the sky over which the moon seems to travel, not as 
a half sphere but as somewhat flattened, and hence when the 
moon is at the horizon we unconsciously judge that it is 
farther off than when overhead. But any body which ex¬ 
cites the same extent of the sensitive surface of the eye at a 
great distance that another does at less, must be larger than 
the latter; and so we conclude that the moon at the horizon 
is larger than the moon in the zenith, and are ready to de¬ 
clare that we see it so. 

So, again, a small bit of pale gray paper on a white 
sheet looks gray: but placed on a large bright green surface 
it looks purple; and on a bright red surface looks blue- 
green. As the same bit of gray paper is shifted from one to 
the other we see it change its color: it arouses in us different 
feelings, or feelings which we interpret differently, although 
objectively the light reflected from it remains the same. 
Similarly a medium-sized man alongside of a very tall one 
appears short, but when walking with a very short one, tall. 

Such erroneous perceptions as these are known as sensory 
illusions; and we ought to be constantly on guard against 
them. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


Si 

THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 

The Essential Structure of an Eye. Every visual organ 
consists primarily of a nervous expansion, provided with end- 
organs by means of which light is enabled to excite nervous 
impulses, and exposed to the access of objective light; such 
an expansion is called a retina . By itself, however, a retina 
would give no visual sensations referable to distinctly limited 
external objects; it would enable its possessor to tell light 
from darkness, more light from less light, and (at least in its 
highly developed forms) light of one color from light of an¬ 
other color; but that would be all. Were our eyes merely 
retinas we could only tell a printed page from a blank one by 
the fact that, being partly covered with black letters (which 
reflect less light), it would excite our visual organ less power¬ 
fully than the spotless white page would. In order that dis¬ 
tinct objects and not merely degrees of luminosity may be 
seen, some arrangement is needed which shall bring all light 
entering the eye from one point of a luminous surface to a 
focus again on one point of the sensitive surface. If A and 
B (Eig. 139) be two red spots on a black surface, K, and rr 
be a retina, then rays of light diverging from A would fall 
equally on all parts of the retina and excite it all a little; so 
with rays starting from B. The sensation aroused, suppos¬ 
ing the retina in connection with the rest of the nervous 
visual apparatus, would be one of a certain amount of red 
light reaching the eye; the red spots, as definite objects, 
would be indistinguishable. If, however, a convex glass lens 
L (Eig. 140) be put in front of the retina, it will cause to 
converge again to a single point all the rays from A falling 
upon it; so, too, with the rays from B : and if the focal dis¬ 
tance of the lens be properly adjusted these points of conver¬ 
gence will both lie on the retina, that for rays from A at «, 
and that for rays from B at b. The sensitive surface would 
then only be excited at two limited and separated points by 

504 


THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 505 

the red light emanating from the spots; consequently only 
some of its end-organs and nerve-fibres would be stimulated 
and the result would be the recognition of two separate red 



Fig. 1J).—Diagram illustrating the indistinctness of vision with a retina alone 
K, a surface on which are two spots. A and B\ r r, the retina. The diverging 
lines represent rays of light spread uniformly over the retina from each spot. 

objects. In our eyes there are certain refracting media 
which lie in front of the retina and take the place of the lens 
L in Fig. 140. That portion of physiology which treats of 



Fig. 140.—Illustrating the use of a lens in giving definite retinal images. A, B, 
K, r r, as in Fig. 139. L, a biconvex lens so placed that it brings to a focus on the 
points a and b of the retina, rays of light diverging from A and B respectively. 

the physical action of these media or, in other words, of the 
eye as an optical instrument, is known as the dioptrics of the 
eye. 

The Appendages of the Eye. The eyeball itself con¬ 
sists of the retina and refracting media, together with sup¬ 
porting and nutritive structures and other accessory appa¬ 
ratuses, as, for example, some controlling the light-converg¬ 
ing power of the media, and others regulating the size of the 
aperture (pupil) by which light enters. Outside the ball lie 
muscles which bring about its movements, and other parts 
serving to protect it. - 

Each orbit is a pyramidal cavity occupied by connective 
tissue, muscles, blood-vessels and nerves, and in great part by 
fat, which forms a soft cushion on which the back of the eye¬ 
ball lies and rolls during its movements. The contents of 


















506 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the orbit being for the most part incompressible, the eye cam 
not be drawn into its socket. It simply rotates there, as 
the head of the femur does in the acetabulum. When the 
orbital blood-vessels are gorged, however, the eyeball may 
protrude (as in strangulation); and when these vessels empty 
it recedes somewhat, as is commonly seen after death. The 
front of the eye is exposed for the purpose of allowing light 
to reach it, but can be covered up by the eyelids , which are 
folds of integument, movable by muscles and strengthened 
by plates of fibro-cartilage. At the edge of each eyelid the 
skin which covers its outside is turned in, and becomes con¬ 
tinuous with a mucous membrane, the conjunctiva , which 
lines the inside of each lid, and also covers all the front of 
the eyeball as a closely adherent layer. 

The upper eyelid is larger and more mobile than the 
lower, and when the eye is closed covers all its transparent 
part. It has a special muscle to raise it, the levator palpebrce 
superioris. The eyes are closed by a flat circular muscle, 
the orbicularis palpebrarum which, lying on and around the 
lids, immediately beneath the skin, surrounds the aperture 
between them. At their outer and inner angles (canthi) the 
eyelids are united, and the apparent size of the eye depends 
upon the interval between the canthi, the eyeball itself being 
nearly of the same size in all persons. Near the inner can- 
thus the line of the edge of each eyelid changes its direction 
and becomes more horizontal. At this point is found a small 
eminence, the lachrymal papilla , on each lid. For most of 
their extent the inner surfaces of the eyelids are in contact 
with the outside of the eyeball, but near their inner ends a 
red vertical fold of conjunctiva, the semilunar fold (plica 
semilitnaris) intervenes. This is a representative of the third 
eyelid, or nictitating membrane, found largely developed in 
many animals, as birds, in which it can be drawn all over the 
exposed part of the eyeball. At the inner or nasal corner is a 
reddish elevation, the caruncula lachrymalis, caused by a 
collection of sebaceous glands imbedded in the semilunar 
fold. Opening along the edge of each eyelid are from 
twenty to thirty minute compound sebaceous glands, named 
the Meibomian follicles. Their secretion is sometimes ab¬ 
normally abundant, and then appears as a yellowish matter 
along the edges of the eyelids, which olten dries in the night 
and causes the lids to be glued together in the morning. 


THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 507 


The eyelashes are short curved hairs, arranged in one or two 
rows along each lid where the skin joins the conjunctiva. 

The Lachrymal Apparatus consists of the tear-gland in 
each orbit, the ducts which carry its secretion to the upper eye¬ 
lid, and the canals by which the tears, unless when excessive, 
are carried off from the front of the eye without running down 
over the face. The lachrymal or tear gland, about the size 
of an almond, lies in the upper and outer part.of the orbit, 
near the front end. It is a compound racemose gland, from 
which twelve or fourteen ducts run and open in a row at the 
outer corner of the upper eyelid. The secretion there poured 
out, is spread evenly over the exposed part of the eye by the 
movements of winking, and keeps it moist; finally the tear is 
drained off by two lachrymal canals , one of which opens by a 
small pore (punctum lachrymalis) on each lachrymal papilla. 
The aperture of the lower canal can be readily seen by ex¬ 
amining the corresponding papilla by the aid of a looking- 
glass. The canals run inwards and open into the lachrymal 
sac, which lies just outside the nose, in a hollow where the 
lachrymal and superior maxillary bones (L and Mx, Fig. 
30) meet. From the sac the nasal duct proceeds to open 
into the nose-chamber, below the inferior turbinate bone 
and within the nostril. 

Tears are constantly being secreted, but ordinarily in 
such quantity as to be drained off into the nose, from which 
they flow into the pharynx and are swallowed. When the 
lachrymal ducts are stopped up, however, their continual 
presence makes itself unpleasantly felt, and may need the aid 
of a surgeon to clear the passage. In weeping the secretion 
is increased, and then not only more of it enters the nose, 
but some flows down the cheeks. The frequent swallowing 
movements of a crying child, sometimes spoken of as “ gulp¬ 
ing down his passion,” are due to the need of swallowing the 
extra tears which reach the pharynx. 

The Muscles of the Eye (Fig. 141). The eyeball is 
spheroidal in form and attached behind to the optic nerve, n, 
somewhat as a cherry might be to a thick stalk. On its ex¬ 
terior are inserted the tendons of six muscles, four straight 
and two oblique. The straight muscles lie, one (superior 
rectus), s, above, one (inferior rectus) below, one (external 
rectus), a, outside, and one (internal rectus), i, inside the 
eyeball. Each arises behind from the bony margin of the 


508 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


foramen through which the optic nerve enters the orbit. In 
the figure, which represents the orbits opened from above, 
the superior rectus of the right side has been removed. The 
superior oblique or pulley ( trochlear ) muscle , t, arises behind 
near the straight muscles and forms anteriorly a tendon, u, 
which passes through a fibro-cartilaginous ring, or pulley, 
placed at the notch in the frontal bone where it bounds 
superiorly the front end of the orbit. The tendon then turns 


A A 



Fig. 141.—The eyeballs and their muscles as seen when the roof of the orbit 
has been removed and ilie fat in the cavity has been partly cleared away. On the 
right side the superior rectus muscl° has been cut away, a, external rectus; s, 
superior rectus ; i, internal rectus; t, superior oblique. 

back and is inserted into the eyeball between the upper and 
outer recti muscles. The inferior oblique muscle does not 
arise, like the rest, at the back of the orbit, but near its front 
at the inner side, close to the lachrymal sac. It passes thence 
outwards and backwards beneath the eyeball to be inserted 
into its outer and posterior part. 

The inner, upper, and lower straight muscles, the inferior 
oblique, and the elevator of the upper lid are supplied by 
branches of the third cranial nerve. The sixth cranial nerve 
goes to the outer rectus; and the fourth to the superior oblique. 

The eye may be moved from side to side; up or down; 
obliquely, that is neither truly vertically nor horizontally, 
but partly both; or, finally, it may be rotated on its antero¬ 
posterior axis. The oblique movements are always accom- 







THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 509 


panied by a slight amount of rotation. When the glance is 
turned to the left, the left external rectus and the right in¬ 
ternal contract, and vice versa; when up, both superior recti; 
when down, both the inferior. The superior oblique muscle 
acting alone will roll the front of the eye downwards and 
outwards with a certain amount of rotation; the inferior 
oblique does the reverse. In oblique movements two of the 
recti are concerned, an upper or lower with.an inner or 
outer; at the same time one of the oblique also always con¬ 
tracts. Movements of rotation rarely, if ever, occur alone. 

The natural combined movements of the eyes by which 
both are directed simultaneously towards the same point de¬ 
pends on the accurate adjustment of all its nervo-muscular 
apparatus. When the co-ordination is deficient the person is. 
said to squint. A left external squint would be caused by 
paralysis of the inner rectus of that eye, for then, after the 
eyeball had been turned out by the external rectus, it would 
not be brought back again to its median position. A left 
internal squint would be caused, similarly, by paralysis of 
the left external rectus; and probably by disease of the sixth 
cranial nerve or its brain-centres. Dropping of the upper 
eyelid (ptosis) indicates paralysis of its special elevator muscle 
and is often a serious symptom, pointing to disease of the 
brain-parts from which it is innervated. 

The Globe of the Eye is on the whole spherical, but 
consists of segments of two spheres (see Fig. 142), a portion 
of a sphere of smaller radius forming its anterior transparent 
part and being set on to the front of its posterior segment, 
which is part of a larger sphere. From before back it 
measures about 22.5 millimeters ( T 9 ¥ inch), and from side to 
side about 25 millimeters (1 inch). Except when looking at 
near objects, the antero-posterior axes of the eyeballs are 
nearly parallel, though the optic nerves diverge considerably 
(Fig. 141); each nerve joins its eyeball, not at the centre, but 
about 2.5 mm. ( T V inch) on the nasal side of the posterior end 
of its antero-posterior axis. In general terms the eyeball may 
be described as consisting of three coats and three refracting 
media. 

The outer coat, 1 and 3, Fig. 142, consists of the sclerotic 
and the cornea , the latter being transparent and situated in 
front; the formei is opaque and white and covers the back 
and sides of the globe and part of the front, where it is seen 


510 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


between the eyelids as the white of the eye. Both are tough 
and strong, being composed of dense connective tissue. The 
white of the eye and the cornea are covered by a thin layer of 
the conjunctiva, 4 and 5. Behind the proper connective- 
tissue layer, 3, of the cornea is a thin structureless membrane. 



Fig. 142.—The left eyeball in horizontal section from before back. 1, sclerotic; 
3, junction of sclerotic and cornea; 3, cornea: !. 5, conjunctiva; 6, posterior 
•elastic layer of cornea; 7. ciliary muscle; 10. choroid; 11. 13. ciliary processes; 
14, iris; 15. retina; 16, optic nerve; 17. artery entering retina in optic nerve; 18’ 
fovea centralis; 19, region where sensory part of retina ends; 22. suspensory 
ligament; 23 is placed in the canal of Petit and the line from 25 points to it; 24, 
the anterior part of the hyaloid membrane; 26, 27. 28 are placed on the lens; 28 
points to the line of attachment around it of the suspensory ligament; 29, vitreous 
'humor; 3U, anterior chamber of aqueous humor; 31, posterior chamber of aqueous 
•humor. 


'6, lined inside by a single layer of epithelial cells; it is the 
membrane of Descemet, or the posterior elastic layer . 

The second coat consists of the choroid , 9, 10, the ciliary 
processes , 11, 13, and the iris , 14. The choroid is made 
up of blood-vessels supported by loose connective tissue 
containing numerous corpuscles, which in its inner layers 
are richly filled with dark-brown or black pigment granules. 
Towards the front of the eyeball, where it begins to diminish 
in diameter, the choroid is thrown into plaits, the ciliary 
processes , 11, 13. Beyond these it continues as the iris, 
which forms the colored part of the eye seen through the 
cornea; and in the centre of the iris is a circular aperture. 





THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT 511 


the pupil: so its second coat does not, like the outer one, 
completely envelop the eyeball. In the iris is a ring of plain 
muscular tissue encircling the aperture of the pupil: when its 
fibres contract they narrow the pupil. Eadial fibres can be 
found passing from the ring to the outer edge of the iris, 
and they have been supposed to be muscular and concerned 
in dilating the pupil. They are probably merely elastic and, 
being stretched when the circular muscle contracts, by 
mere physical elasticity dilate the pupil when the muscle 
relaxes. The circular or sphincter muscle appears to be 
normally in a state of tonic contraction; this is increased 
by impulses travelling in fibres of the third cranial nerve 
and is diminished or inhibited by impulses travelling along 
fibres of the sympathetic, which, however, have their origin in 
the medulla oblongata and run down the spinal cord to the 
lower part of the neck, where they pass out in anterior spinal 
nerve-roots to reach the sympathetic. The pigment in the 
iris is yellow, or of lighter or darker brown, according to the 
color of the eye, and more or less abundant according as the 
eye is black, brown, or gray. In blue eyes the pigment is 
confined to the deeper layers, and modified in tint by light 
absorption in the anterior colorless strata through which the 
light passes. 

The third coat of the Cye, the retina , 15, is its essential 
portion, being the part in which the light produces those 
changes that give rise to impulses in the optic nerve. It is 
a still less complete envelope than the second tunic, extend¬ 
ing forwards only as far as the commencement of the ciliary 
processes, at least in its typical form. It is extremely soft 
and delicate; and, when fresh, transparent. Usually when 
an eye is opened the retina is colorless; but when the eye has 
been cut open in faint yellow light and the exposed retina 
quickly examined in white light it is seen to be purple. The 
coloring substance (visualpurple) very rapidly bleaches when 
a dead eye is exposed to daylight. On front or inner surface 
of the human retina two special areas can be distinguished in 
a fresh eye. One is the point of entry of the optic nerve, 16, the 
fibres of which, penetrating the sclerotic and choroid, spread 
out in the retina. At this place the retina is whiter than 
elsewhere and presents an elevation, the optic mound. The 
other peculiar region is the yellow spot (macula lutea ), 18, 
which lies nearly at the posterior end of the axis of the eye - 


512 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


ball and therefore outside the optic mound; in its centre the 
retina is thinner than elsewhere and so a pit (fovea cen¬ 
tralis), 18, is formed. This appears black, the thinned 
retina there allowing the choroid to be seen through it more 
clearly than elsewhere. In Fig. 143 is represented the left 
retina as seen from the front, the elliptical darker patch 
about the centre indicating the yellow spot, and the white circle 
on one side, the optic mound. The vessels of the retina 
arise from an artery (17, Fig. 142) which runs in with the 
optic nerve and from which branches diverge as shown in 
Fig. 143. 

The Optic Nerves, Commissure, and Tracts. The optic 
nerves converge to meet in the optic commissure ( m , Fig. 
141), from which the optic tracts pass to the region of the 
midbrain. They terminate mainly in the anterior corpora 
quadrigemina (Chap. XII) and in masses of gray nerve matter 
lying to the outer sides and in front of these, and known as 
the corpora geniculata. At the commissure ( m , Fig. 141) many 
fibres cross the middle line, so that fibres from each optic nerve 
are found in both optic tracts. In general, fibres from the 
right (that is, the outer or temporal) side of the right retina 
and the right ( i.e . nasal) side of the left retina pass on to the 
brain in the right optic tract; and similarly for the left sides 
of the two retinas. Cutting the right optic nerve, therefore, 
causes total blindness of the right eye, but cutting of the 
right optic tract blindness of the right half of each retina 
(. hemianopia ). It will later be seen that rays of light cross in 
the eye so that objects to the left in space form images on 
the right sides of the retinas; and vice versa (Figs. 153, 154). 
Consequently section or extensive disease of the right optic 
tract causes left hemianopia/ that is, blindness to objects on 
the left of the line of vision. 

The incomplete crossing of the optic nerve-fibres in man 
is correlated with the fact that his eyes are so placed that 
part of the field of vision is common to both. In mammals 
whose eyes are so laterally placed that at any given moment 
the objects seen by the two eyes are quite different, the cross¬ 
ing at the commissure is complete; when the eyes are placed 
so that some oojects can be seen simultaneously by the two 
eyes, some fibres cross, and a greater number cross the larger, 
the common part of the visual fields. Even in man more of 
the fibres cross than go direct to the same side of the brain. 


THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 513 


The Microscopic Structure of the Retina. A simpli¬ 
fied stratum, continuous with the proper retina, and formed 
of a layer of nucleated columnar cells, is continued over the 
ciliary processes; elsewhere the membrane has a very com¬ 
plex structure, and a section taken, except at the yellow spot 
or the optic mound, shows ten layers, partly sensory appa¬ 
ratuses and nerve-tissues, and partly accessory structures. 

Beginning (Fig. 144) on the front side we find, first, the 
internal limiting membrane , 1 , a thin structureless layer. 
Next comes the nerve-fibre layer , 2, formed by radiating 
fibres of the optic nerve; third, the nerve-cell layer, 3; fourth. 



2 

i 


Fig. 143.—The right retina as it would be seen if the front part of tho eyeball 
with the lens and vitreous humor were removed. 

the inner molecular layer , 4, consisting partly of very fine 
nerve-fibrils, and largely of connective tissue; fifth, the 
inner nuclear layer , 5, composed* of nucleated cells, with a 
small amount of protoplasm at each end, and a nucleolus. 
These cells, or at any rate the majority of them, have an 
inner process running to the inner molecular layer and an 
outer running to, 6, the outer molecular layer, which is 
thinner than the inner. Then comes, seventh, the rod and 
cone fibre layer, 7, or outer nuclear layer; composed of thick 
and thin fibres in each of which is a conspicuous nucleus 
with a nucleolus. Next is the thin external limiting mem¬ 
brane, 8 , perforated by apertures through which the rods and 
cones, 9, of the ninth layer join the fibres of the seventh. 
Outside of all, next the choroid, is the pigmentary layer, 10; 



514 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the cells of this layer send processes between the rods and 
cones. The processes contain dark pigment and in eyes 
which have been exposed to bright light reach a long way, 
sometimes even as far as the external limiting membrane. 
If, however, the animal have been kept in the dark for some 



Fig. 144.—A section through the retina from its anterior or inner surface, 1, in 
contact with the hyaloid membrane, to its outer, 10, in contact with the choroid. 
1, internal limiting membrane; 2, nerve-fibre layer; 3, nerve-cell layer; 4, inner 
molecular layer; 5. inner nuclear layer; 6. outer molecular layer; 7, rod and cone 
fibres or outer nuclear layer; 8, external limiting membrane; 9, rod and cone 
layer; 10, pigment-cell layer. 

time before its eye is removed, the processes of the pigment- 
cells are short and extend only a short distance between the 
outer ends of the rods. In addition, certain fibres run verti¬ 
cally through the retina from the inner to th6 outer limiting 
membrane; they are known as the radial fibres of Muller 
























































THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 515 


and give off lateral branches, which are especially numerous 
in the molecular layers. Like the limiting membranes they 
are merely supporting tissues. 

On account of the way in which the supporting and essen¬ 
tial parts are interwoven in the retina it is not easy to track 
the latter through it. There is, however (Chap. XXXIII), 
good evidence that light first acts upon the rod and cone 
layer, traversing all the thickness of inner strata of the retina 
to reach it, before starting those changes which result in 
visual sensations; and it is therefore probable that the rods 
and cones are in direct continuity with the optic nerve-fibres. 
The limiting membranes, with the fibres of Muller and their 
branches, are undoubtedly merely accessory and supporting. 

Each rod and cone consists of an outer and an inner seg¬ 
ment. The outer segments of both tend to split up trans¬ 
versely into disks and are very similar, except that those of 
the rods are longer than those of the cones and do not taper 
as the latter do. Moreover, the visual purple is entirely con¬ 
fined to the outer segments of the rods, the cones containing 
none of it. The inner segments of the cones are swollen, 
while those of the rods are narrow and nearly cylindrical. 
Over most of the retina the rods are longer and much more 
numerous than the cones, but near the ciliary processes they 
cease before the cones do; and in the yellow spot elongated 
cones alone are found. In this region the whole retina is 
modified; at its margin all the layers are iluckened but 
especially the nerve-cell layer, which becomes six or seven 
thick, while elsewhere the cells are found in but one or two 
strata. Most of the fibres run obliquely, reaching in to become 
continuous with the cones of the central pit, which are long, 
slender, and very closely packed. In the fovea itself all the 
layers, except that o± the cones, thin away, and thus the depres¬ 
sion is produced. The fovea is the seat of most acute vision; 
when we look at an object we always turn our eyes so that the 
light proceeding from it shall be focussed on the two foveae. 
Where the optic nerve enters, all the layers but the nerve- 
fibre layer (which is there very thick), and the internal limit¬ 
ing membrane, are absent. 

The blood-vessels of the retina lie almost entirely in the 
nerve-fibre and nerve-cell layers. 

The Refracting Media of the Eye are, in succession from 
before back, the cornea, the aqueous humor, the crystalline 
lens, and the vitreous humor . 


516 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The aqueous humor fills the space between the front of 
the lens, 28, and the back of the cornea. This space is in¬ 
completely divided by the iris into an anterior chamber, 30, 
and a posterior, 31 (Fig. 142). Chemically, the aqueous humor 
consists of water holding in solution a small amount of solid 
matters, mainly common salt. 

The crystalline lens (28, 26, 27) is colorless, transparent, 
and biconvex, with its anterior surface less curved than the 
posterior. It is surrounded by a capsule, and the inner edge 
of the iris lies in contact with it in front. In consistence it 
is soft, but its central layers are rather more dense than the 
outer. 

The vitreous humor is a soft jelly enveloped in a thin 
capsule, the hyaloid membrane. In front, this membrane 
splits into two layers, one of which, 22, passes on to be fixed 
to the lens a little in front of its edge. This layer is known 
as the suspensory ligament of the lens; its line of attachment 
around that organ is not straight but sinuous as represented 
by the curved line between 28 and 26 in Fig. 142. The space 
between the two layers into which the hyaloid splits is the 
canal of Petit. The vitreous humor consists, mainly of water 
and contains some salts, a little albumin, and some mucin. 
It is divided up, by delicate membranes, into compartments 
in which its more liquid portions are imprisoned. 

The Ciliary Muscle. Running around the eyeball where 
the cornea joins the sclerotic is a lymph-vessel called the 
canal of Schlemm; it is seen in section at 8 in Fig. 142. 
Lying on the inner side of this canal, just where the iris and 
the ciliary processes meet, there is some plain muscular tissue, 
imbedded mainly in the middle coat of the eyeball and form¬ 
ing the ciliary muscle , which consists of a radial and a 
circular portion (Fig. 149). The radial part is much the 
larger, and arises in front from the inner surface of the scler¬ 
otic; the fibres pass back, spreading out as they go, and are 
inserted into the front of the choroid opposite the ciliary 
processes. The circular part of the muscle lies around the 
outer rim of the iris. The contraction of the ciliary muscle 
tends to pull forward (radial fibres) and press inward (circu¬ 
lar fibres) the front part of the choroid, to which the back 
part of the suspensory ligament of the lens is closely at¬ 
tached. When this occurs the tension exerted on the margin 
of the lens by its ligament is diminished. 

The Properties of Light. Before proceeding to the 


THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 517 

study of the eye as an optical instrument, it is necessary to 
recall briefly certain properties of light. 

Light is considered as a form of movement of the particles 
of an hypothetical medium, or ether, the vibrations being in 
planes at right angles to the line of propagation of the light. 
When a stone is thrown into a pond a series of circular waves 
travel from that point in a horizontal direction over the 
water, while the particles of water themselves move up and 
down, and cause the surface inequalities which we see as 
the waves. Somewhat similarly, light-waves spread out from 
a luminous point, but in the same medium travel equally in 
all directions so that the point is surrounded by shells of 
spherical waves, instead of rings of circular waves travelling 
in one plane only, as those on the surface of the water. 
Starting from a luminous point light would travel in all 
directions along the radii of a sphere of which the point is 
the centre; the light propagated along one such radius is 
called a ray , and in each ray the ethereal particles swing 
from side to side in a plane perpendicular to the direction of 
the ray. Taking a particle on any ray it would swing aside a 
certain distance from it, then back to it again, and across for 
a certain distance on the other side; and then back to its 
original position on the line of the ray. Such a movement is 
an oscillation, and takes a certain time; in lights of certain 
kinds the periods of oscillation are all the same, no matter 
how great the extent or amplitude of the oscillation; just as 
a given pendulum will always complete its swing in the same 
time no matter whether its swings be great or small. Light 
composed of rays in which the periods of oscillation arc all 
equal is called monochromatic or simple light, while light 
made of a mixture of oscillations of different periods is called 
mixed or compound light. 

If monochromatic light is steadily emitted from a point, 
we come at definite distances along a ray, to particles in 
the same phase of oscillation, say at their greatest distance 
from their position of rest; just as in the concentiic waves 
seen on the water after throwing in a stone we would along 
any radius meet, at intervals, with water raised most above 
its horizontal plane as the crest of a wave, or depressed most 
below it as the hollow of a wave. The distance along the ray 
from crest to crest is called a wave-length and is always the 
same in any given simple light; but it is different in simple 


518 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


lights of different colors; the briefer the time of an oscillation 
the less the wave-length. 

When light falls on a polished surface separating two 
transparent media, as air and glass, part of it is reflected or 
turned back into the first medium; part goes on into the 
second medium, and is commonly deviated from its original 
course or refracted. The original ray falling on the surface 
is the incident ray. 



c 

/a 



B 

A 

D 



Let A B (Fig. 145) be the 
surface of separation; ax the 
incident ray; and C D the 
perpendicular or normal to the 


Fig. 145.—Diagram illustrating the 
refraction of light. A B, surface of 
separation between two transparent 
media; C D , the perpendicular to the 
surface at the point of incidence, x; 
a x, incident ray; x d, refracted ray, 
if the second medium be denser than 
the first; x g, refracted ray, if the 
second medium is less refractive than 
the first. The reflected ray is not 
represented, but would make an angle 
with Cx, equal to the angle a x C. 


dence: a x C will then be the 
angle of incidence. Then the 
reflected ray makes an angle 
of reflection with the normal 
which is equal to the angle of 
incidence; and the reflected 
ray lies in the same plane as 
the incident ray and the nor¬ 
mal to the surface at x. The 
refracted ray lies also in the 
same plane as the normal and 
the incident ray, but does not 
continue in its original direction, x /; if the medium below 
A B be more refractive than that above it, the refracted ray 
is bent, as x d , nearer to the normal, and making with it an 
angle of refraction, D xd, smaller than the angle of inci¬ 
dence, a x C. If, on the contrary, the second medium is less 
refracting than the first, the refracted ray x g is bent away 
from the normal, and makes an angle of refraction, D x g, 
greater than the angle of incidence. The ratio of the sine of 
the angle of incidence to that of the angle of refraction is 
always the same for the same two media with light of the 
same wave-length. When the first medium is air the ratio of 
the sine of the angle of refraction to that of the angle of in¬ 
cidence is called the refractive index of the second medium. 


The greater this refractive index the more is the refracted 
ray deviated from its original course. Rays which fall per¬ 
pendicularly on the surface of separation of two media pass 
on without refraction. 




THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 519 

The shorter the oscillation periods of light-rays the more 
they are deviated by refraction. Hence mixed light when 



sent through a prism is spread out, and decomposed into its 
simple constituents. For let a x (Fig. 146) be a ray of mixed 
light composed of a set of short and a set of long ethereal 
■waves. When it falls on the surface A B of the prism, that 
portion which enters will be refracted towards the normal 
E D, but the short waves more than the longer. Hence the 
former will take the direction x y , and the latter the direc¬ 
tion x z. On emerging from the prism both rays will again 
be refracted, but now from the normals F y and G z , since 
the light is passing from a more to a less refracting medium. 
Again the ray x y, made up of shorter waves, will be most 
deviated, as in the direction y v, and the long waves less, in 
the direction z r. If a screen were put at S S', we would re¬ 
ceive on it at separate points, v and r , the two simple lights 
which were mixed together in the compound incident ray 
a x. Such a separation of light-rays is called dispersion. 

Ordinary white light, such as that of the sun, is composed 
of ethereal vibrations of every rate, mixed together. When 
such light is sent through a prism it gives a continuous band 
of light-rays, known as the solar spectrum reaching from the 
least refracted to the most refracted and shortest waves. The 
exceptions to this statement due to FrauenhofeFs lines (see 
Physics) are unessential for our present purpose. All of the 
simple lights into which the compound solar light is thus 




520 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


separated do not, however, excite in us visual sensations when 
they fall into the eye, but only certain middle ones. If solar 
light were used with the prism, Fig. 146, certain least re¬ 
fracted rays between r and S' would not be seen, nor the 
most refracted between v and S; while between v and r 
would stretch a luminous band exciting in us the series of 
color sensations from red (due to the least refracted visible 
rays), through orange, yellow, green, bright blue, and indigo, to 
violet, which latter is the sensation aroused by the most re¬ 
frangible visible rays. The still shorter waves beyond the 
violet can only be seen under special conditions; they are 
known mainly by their chemical effects and are called the 
actinic rays; the invisible waves beyond the red exert a 
powerful heating influence and compose the dark-heat rays. 
The eye, as an organ for making known to us the existence 
of ethereal vibrations, has, therefore, only a limited range. 

Refraction of Light by Lenses. In the eye the refract¬ 
ing: media have the form of lenses thicker in the centre than 
© 


towards the periphery; and we may here confine ourselves 
therefore to such converging lenses . If simple light from a 
point A, Fig. 140, fall on such a lens its rays, emerging on 
the other side, will take new directions after refraction and 
meet anew at a point, a, after which they again diverge. If 
a screen, r r, be held at a it will therefore receive an image 
of the luminous point A. For every converging lens there 
is such a point behind it at which the rays from a given point 
in front of it meet: the point of meeting is called the conju¬ 
gate focus of the point from which the rays start. If instead 
of a luminous point a luminous object be placed in front of 
the lens an image of the object will be formed at a certain 
distance behind it, for all rays proceeding from one point of 
the object will meet in the conjugate focus of that point be¬ 
hind. The image is inverted, as can be readily seen from 
Fig. 147. All rays from the point 
A of the object meet at the point 
a of the image; those from B at 6, 
and those from intermediate points 
at intermediate positions. If the 
single lens were replaced by sev¬ 
eral combined so as to form an 
optical system the general result would be the same, provided 
the system were thicker in the centre than at the periphery. 



Fig. 147.— Diagram illustrating 
the formation of an image by a 
converging lens. 






THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 521 


The Camera Obscura, as used by photographers, is an in¬ 
strument which serves to illustrate the formation of images 
by converging systems of lenses It consists of a box blackened 
inside and Having on its front face a tube containing the 
lenses; the posterior wall is made of ground glass. If the 
front of the instrument be directed on exterior objects, in¬ 
verted and diminished images of them will be formed on the 
ground glass; those images only are well defined, at any one 
time, which are at such a distance in front of the instrument 
that the conjugate foci of points on them fall exactly on the 
glass behind the lens; objects nearer or farther off give con¬ 
fused and indistinct images; but by altering the distance be¬ 
tween the lenses and the ground glass, in common language 
“ focussing the instrument,” either can be made distinct. For 
near objects the lenses must be farther from the surface on 
which the image is to be received, and for distant nearer. 
The reason of this may readily be seen from Fig. 148. If the 
system of lenses brings the parallel rays a c and b d, proceed¬ 
ing from an infinitely distant object, to a focus at x, then the 
diverging rays / c and f d, proceeding from a nearer point, 
will be harder to bend round, so to speak, and will not meet 
until a point y , farther behind the system than x is. The 
more divergent the rays, or what amounts to the same thing, 
the nearer the point they proceed from, the farther behind 
the refracting system will y be. 



Fig. 148.—Diagram illustrating the need of “ focussing ” in an optical instru¬ 
ment. 

The refracting media of the eye form a convergent optical 
system, made up of cornea, aqueous humor, lens, and vitreous 
humor. These four media are reduced to three practically, 
by the tact that the indices of refraction of the cornea and 
aqueous humor are the same, so that they act together as one 
converging lens. The surfaces at which refraction occurs 
are —(1) that between the air and the cornea, (2) that between 
the aqueous humor and the front of the lens, (3) that between 
the vitreous humor and the back of the lens. The refractive 




522 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


indices of those media are—the air, 1; the aqueous humor, 
1.3379; the lens (average), 1.4545; the vitreous humor, 
1.3379. From the laws of the refraction of light it therefore 
follows that (Fig. 149) the rajs C d will at the corneal surface 
be refracted towards the normals JN, N, and take the course d e . 
At the front of the lens they will again be refracted towards 
the normals to that surface and take the course e f; at the 
back of the lens, passing from a more refracting to a less re¬ 
fracting medium, they will be bent from the normals N" and 
take the course f g. If the retina be there, these parallel rays 
will therefore be brought to a focus on it. In the resting 
condition of the natural eye this is what happens to parallel 
rays entering it: and, since distant objects send into the eye 
rays which are practically parallel, such objects are seen dis¬ 
tinctly without any effort, because all rays emanating from a 
point of the object meet again in one point on the retina. 

Accommodation. Points on near objects send into the eye 
diverging rays: these therefore would not come to a focus on 
the retina but behind it, and would not be seen distinctly, 
did not some change occur in the eye; since we can see them 



Fig. 149.—Diagram illustrating the surfaces at which light is refracted in the eye. 

quite plainly if we choose (unless they be very near indeed), 
there must exist some means by which the eye is focussed or 
accommodated for looking at objects at different distances. 
That some change does occur one can, also, readily prove by 
observing that we cannot see distinctly, at the same moment, 
both near and distant objects. For example standing behind 





THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 523 


a lace curtain, at a window, we can as we choose look at 
the threads of the lace or at the houses across the street; but 
when we look at the one we see the other only indistinctly; 
and if, after looking at the more distant object, we look at the 
nearer we experience a distinct sense of eifort. It is clear, 
then, that something in the eye is different in the two cases. 
The resting eye, suited for distinctly seeing distant objects, 
might conceivably be accommodated for near vision in several 
ways. The refracting indices of its media might be in¬ 
creased; that of course does not happen; the physical prop¬ 
erties of the media are the same in both cases: or the dis¬ 
tance of the retina from the refracting surfaces might be in¬ 
creased, for example by compression of the eyeball by the 
muscles around it; however, experiment shows that changes 
of accommodation can, by stimulating the third cranial nerve, 
be brought about in the fresh excised eyes of animals from 
which the muscles lying outside the eyeball have been re¬ 
moved, in which no such compression is possible; we are thus 
reduced to the third explanation, that the refracting surfaces, 
or some of them, become more curved, and so bring diverging 
rays sooner to a focus; for a lens of smaller curvature is more 
converging than one of greater curvature composed of the 
same material. Observation shows that this is what actually 
happens: the corneal surface remains unchanged when a near 
object is looked at after a distant one, but 



the anterior surface of the lens becomes con¬ 
siderably more convex and the posterior 
slightly so. As already pointed out, when 
light meets the separating surface of two 
media some is reflected and some refracted. 

If, therefore, a person be taken into a 
dark room and a candle be held on one side 
of his eye while he looks at a distant object, 
an observer can see three images of the flame 
in his pupil, due to that portion of the light 
reflected from the surfaces between the 
media. One image (a, Fig. 150) is erect and bright, reflected 
from the convex mirror formed by the cornea; the next, b , is 
dimmer and also erect; it comes from the front of the lens. 
The third, c, is dim and inverted , being reflected from the 
concave mirror (see Physics) formed by the back of the lens. 
When the curvature of a curved mirror is altered the size of 


Fig. 150.—The im¬ 
ages of a candle- 
tlame as seen re¬ 
flected from ihe re¬ 
tracting media of the 
eye. 


524 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the image reflected from it is also altered, becoming smaller 
when the radius of curvature of the mirror is lessened and 
vice versa . If the three images be carefully watched while 
the observed eye looks at a near object in the same line as the 
distant point previously looked at, it is seen that the image 
due to corneal reflection remains unchanged; that due to light 
from the front of the lens becomes smaller and brighter; the 
image from the back of the lens also becomes very slightly 
smaller. The change in the curvature of the front of the 
lens can be calculated from the change in size of the image 
reflected from it when the eye changes from distant to near 
accommodation. When a distant object is looked at the 
radius of curvature is 10 mm. (f inch), when a very near 
about 6 mm. inch), and this change is sufficient to ac¬ 
count for the range of accommodation of the normal eye. 

When the eye is focussed for seeing a near object the cir¬ 
cular muscle of the iris contracts, narrowing the pupil, but this 
has nothing directly to do with the accommodation. 

Accommodation is brought about mainly by the ciliary 
muscle (Fig. 151). In the resting eye it is relaxed and the 
suspensory ligament of the lens is taut, and, pulling on its 
edge, drags it out laterally a little and flattens its surfaces. 



especially the anterior, since the ligament is attached a little 
in front of the edge. To see a nearer object the ciliary muscle 
is contracted, and according to the degree of its contraction 
slackens the suspensory ligament, and then the elastic lens, 
relieved from the lateral drag, bulges out a little in the centre. 







THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 525 


Short Sight and Long Sight. In the eye the range of 
accommodation is very great, allowing the rays from points 
infinitely distant up to those from 
points about eight inches in front 
bf the eye to be brought to a 
focus on the retina. In the nor¬ 
mal eye parallel rays meet on the 
retina when the ciliary muscle is 
completely relaxed (A, Fig. 152). 

Such eyes are emmetropic. In 
other eyes the eyeball is too long 
from before back; in the resting 
state parallel rays meet in front 
of the retina (B). Persons with 
such eyes, therefore, cannot see and a hypermetropic ccfeyer'' '~' r 
distant objects distinctly without the aid of diverging (con¬ 
cave) spectacles; they are short-sighted or myopic. Or the 
eyeball may be too short from before back; then, in the rest¬ 
ing state, parallel rays are brought to a focus behind the 
retina ( C ). To see even infinitely distant objects, such per¬ 
sons must therefore use their accommodating apparatus to 
increase the converging power of the lens; and when objects 
are near they cannot, with the greatest effort, bring the di¬ 
vergent rays proceeding from them to a focus soon enough. 
To get distinct retinal images of near objects they therefore 
need converging (convex) spectacles. Such eyes are called 
hypermetropic , or in common language long-sighted. 

Hygienic Remarks. Since muscular effort is needed by 
the normal eye to see near objects, it is clear why the pro¬ 
longed contemplation of such is more fatiguing than looking 
at more distant things. If the eye be hypermetropic still 
more is this apt to be the case, for then the ciliary muscle 
has no rest when the eye is used, and to read a book at a dis¬ 
tance such that enough light is reflected from it into the eye 
in order to enable the letters to be seen at all, requires an ex¬ 
traordinary effort of accommodation. Such persons complain 
that they can read well enough for a time, but soon fail to be 
able to see distinctly. This kind of weak sight should always 
lead to examination of the eyes by an oculist, to see if 
glasses are needed; otherwise severe neuralgic pains about 
the eyes are apt to come on, and the overstrained organ 
may be permanently injured. Old persons are apt to have 









526 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


such eyes; but young children frequently also possess them, 
and if so should at once be provided with spectacles. 

Short-sighted eyes appear to be much more common now 
than formerty, especially in those given to literary pursuits. 
Myopia is rare among those who cannot read or who live 
mainly out of doors. It is not so apt to lead to permanent 
injury of the eye as is the opposite condition, but the effort 
to see distinctly objects a little distant is apt to produce head¬ 
aches and other symptoms of nervous exhaustion. If the 
myopia become gradually worse the eyes should be rested for 
several months. Short-sighted persons are apt to have, or 
acquire, peculiarities of appearance: their eyes are often 
prominent, indicative of the abnormal length of the eyeball. 
They also get a habit of “ screwing” up the eyelids, probably 
an indication of an effort to compress the eyeball from before 
back so that distant objects may be better seen. They often 
stoop, too, from the necessity of getting their eyes near ob¬ 
jects they want to see. The acquirement of such habits may 
be usually prevented by the use of proper glasses. On the 
other hand “ it is said that myopia even induces peculiarities 
of character, and that myopes are usually unsuspicious and 
easily pleased; being unable to observe many little matters in 
the demeanor or expression of those with whom they con¬ 
verse, which, being noticed by those of quicker sight, might 
induce feelings of distrust or annoyance.” 

In old age the lens loses some of its elasticity and becomes 
more rigid. This leads to the long-sightedness of old people, 
known as presbyopia. The stiffer lens does not become as 
convex as it did in early life, when the ciliary muscle con¬ 
tracts and the suspensory ligament is relaxed. A special 
effort of accommodation is therefore needed in order to adapt 
the eye to see near objects distinctly; and convex glasses are 
required. 

In all forms of deficient accommodation too strong glasses 
will injure the eyes irreparably, increasing the defects they 
are intended to relieve. Skilled advice should therefore be 
invariably obtained in their selection, except perhaps in the 
long-sightedness of old age, when the sufferer may tolerably 
safely select for himself any glasses that allow him to read 
easily a book about 30 centimeters (12 inches) from the eye. 
As age advances stronger lenses must usually be obtained. 

Optical Defects of the Eye. The eye, though it answers 


THE EYE AS AH OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 527 


admirably as a physiological instrument, is by no means per¬ 
fect optically; not nearly so good, for example, as a good 
microscope objective. The main defects in it are due to— 

1, Chromatic Aberration. As already pointed out, the 
rays at the violet end of the solar spectrum are more refran¬ 
gible than those at the red end. Hence they are brought to a 
focus sooner. The light emanating from a point on a white 
object does not, therefore, all meet in one point on the retina; 
but the violet rays come to a focus first, then the indigo, and 
so on to the red, farthest back of all. If the eye is accommo¬ 
dated so as to bring to a focus on the retina parallel red rays, 
then violet rays from the same source will meet half a milli¬ 
meter in front of it, and crossing and diverging there make 
a little violet circle of diffusion around the red point on the 
retina. In optical instruments this defect is remedied by 
combining together lenses made of different kinds of glass; 
such compound lenses are called achromatic. 

The general result of chromatic aberration, as may be seen 
in a bad opera-glass, is to cause colored borders to appear 
around the edges of the images of objects. In the eye we 
usually do not notice such borders unless we especially look 
for them; but if, while a white surface is looked at, the edge 
of an opaque body be brought in front of the eye so as to 
cover half the pupil, colorations will be seen at its margin. 
If accommodation be inexact they appear also when the 
boundary between a white and a black surface is observed. 
The phenomena due to chromatic aberration are much more 
easily seen if light containing only red and violet rays be used 
instead of white light containing all the rays of intermediate 
refrangibility. Ordinary blue glass only lets through these two 
kinds of rays. If a bit of it be placed over a very small hole 
in an opaque shutter and sunlight be admitted through the 
hole, it will be found that with one accommodation (that for 
the red rays) a red point is seen with a violet border, and 
with another (that at which violet rays are brought to a focus 
on the retina) a violet point is seen with a red aureole. 

2. Spherical Aberration. It is not quite correct to state 
that ordinary lenses bring to a focus in one point behind them 
rays proceeding from a point in front, even when these are 
all of the same refrangibility. Convex lenses whose surfaces 
are segments of spheres, as are those of the eye, bring to a 
focus sooner the rays which pass through their marginal than 


528 


THE HUMAN BODY . 


those passing through their central parts. If rays proceeding 
from a point and traversing the lateral part of a lens be 
brought to a focus at any point, then those passing through 
the centre of the lens will not meet until a little beyond that 
point. If the retina receive the image formed by the periph¬ 
eral rays the others will form around this a small luminous 
circle of light—such as would be formed by sections of the 
cones of converging rays in Fig. 140, taken a little in front 
of r r. This defect exists in all glass lenses, as it is found 
impossible in practice to grind them of the non-spherical 
curvatures necessary to avoid it. In our eyes its effect is to 
a large extent corrected in the following ways—(«) The 
opaque iris cuts off many of the external and more strongly 
refracted rays, preventing them from reaching the retina. 
(h) The outer layers of the lens are less refracting than the 
central; hence the rays passing through its peripheral parts 
are less refracted than those passing nearer its axis. 

3. Irregularities in Curvature. The refracting surfaces 
of our eyes are not even truly spherical; this is especially the 
case with the cornea, which is very rarely curved to the same 
extent in its vertical and horizontal diameters. Suppose the 
vertical meridian to be the most curved; then the rays pro¬ 
ceeding from points along a vertical line will be brought to a 
focus sooner than those from points on a horizontal line. If 
the eye is accommodated to see distinctly the vertical line, it 
will see indistinctly the horizontal and vice versa. Few 
people therefore see equally clearly at once two lines crossing 
one another at right angles. The phenomenon is most obvi¬ 
ous, however, when a series of 
concentric circles (Fig. 153) is 
looked at: then when the lines 
appear sharp along some sec¬ 
tors, they are dim along the 
rest. When this defect, known 
as astigmatism, is marked it 
causes serious troubles of vis¬ 
ion and requires peculiarly 
shaped glasses to counteract 
it. 

4. Opaque Bodies in the 
Refracting Mecty’a. In dis- 
opaque (cataract) and need 



Fig. 153 . 

eased eyes the lens may be 



THE EYE AS AN OPTICAL INSTRUMENT. 529 


removal; or opacities from ulcers or wounds may exist 
on the cornea. But even in the best eye there are apt to be 
small opaque bodies in the vitreous humor causing muscce 
volitantes; that is, the appearance of minute bodies floating 
in space outside the eye, but changing their position when 
the position of the eye changes, by which fact their origin in 
internal causes may be recognized. Many persons never see 
them until their attention is called to their siglit by some 
weakness of it, and then they think they are new phenomena. 
Visual phenomena due to causes in the eye itself are called 
entoptic; the most interesting are those due to the retinal 
blood-vessels (Chap 0 XXXIII.). Tears, or bits of the secre¬ 
tion of the Meibomian glands, on the front of the eyeball 
often cause distant luminous objects to look like ill-defined 
luminous bands or patches of various shape. The cause of 
such appearances is readily recognized, since they disappear 
or are changed after winking. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 

The Excitation of the Visual Apparatus.—The excitable 
visual apparatus for each eye consists of the retina, the optic 
nerve, and the brain-centres connected with the latter; how¬ 
ever stimulated, if intact, it causes visual sensations. In the 
great majority of cases its excitant is objective light, and so 
we refer all stimulations of it to that cause, unless we have 
special reason to know the contrary. As already pointed 
out pressure on the eyeball causes a luminous sensation 
(phosphene), which suggests itself to us as dependent on a 
luminous body situated in space where such an object must 
be in order to excite the same part of the retina. Since all 
rays of light penetrating the eye, except in the line of its 
long axis, cross that axis, if we press the outer side of the 
eyeball we get a visual sensation referred to a luminous body 
on the nasal side; if we press below we see the luminous 
patch above, and so on. 

Of course different rays entering the eye take different 
paths through it, but on general optical principles, which 
cannot here be detailed, we may trace all oblique rays through 
the organ by assuming that they meet and leave the optic 
axis at what are known as the nodal points of the system; 
these {kk r , Fig. 154) lie near together in the lens. If we 
want to find where rays of light from A will meet the 
retina (the eye being properly accommodated for seeing an 
object at that distance) we draw a line from A to k (the first 
nodal point) and then another, parallel to the first, from k* 
(the second nodal point) to the retina. The nodal points of 
the eye lie so near together that for practical purposes we 
may treat them as one (k, Fig. 155), placed near the back of 
the lens. By manifold experience we have learnt that a 
luminous body (A, Fig. 155) which we see, always lies on the 
prolongation of the line joining the excited part of the retina, 

530 


THE ETE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


531 


a, and the nodal point Tc. Hence any excitation of that part 
of the retina makes ns think of a luminous body somewhere 
on the line a A, and, similarly, any excitation of b, of a body 



Fig. 154.—Diagram illustrating the points at which incident rays meet the retina. 
xx, optic axis ; k, first nodal point; k', second nodal point; 6, point where the im¬ 
age of B would be formed, were the eye properly accommodated for it; a, the 
retinal point where the image of A would be formed. 

on the line b B or its prolongation. It is only other conflict¬ 
ing experiences, as that with the eyes closed external bodies 
do not excite visual sensations, and the constant connection 



Fig. 155.—Diagrammatic section through the eyeball, xx , optic axis ; k, nodal 
point. 

of the pressure felt on the eyelid with the visual sensation, 
that enable us when we press the eyeball to conclude that, in 
spite of what we seem to see, the luminous sensation is not 
due to objective light from outside the eye. 

The Idio-Retinal Light.—The eyelids are not by any 
means perfectly opaque ; in ordinary daylight they still allow 
a considerable quantity of light to penetrate the eye, as any 
one may observe by passing his hand in front of the closed 
eyes. But even in a dark room with the eyes completely 
covered up so that no objective light can enter them, there is 
still experienced a small amount of visual sensation due to 





532 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


internal causes. The field of vision is not absolutely dark 
but slightly luminous, with brighter fleeting patches travers¬ 
ing it. These are especially noticeable, for example, in try¬ 
ing to see and grope one's way with the eyes open up a per¬ 
fectly dark staircase. Then the luminous patches attract 
special attention because they are apt to be taken for the 
signs of objective realities; they become very manifest when 
any sudden jar of the Body, due for example to knocking 
against something, occurs; and have no doubt given rise to 
many ghost stories. These visual sensations felt in the ab- 
sense of all external stimulation of the eyes, may for conveni¬ 
ence be spoken of as due to the idio-retinal light. 

The Excitation of the Visual Apparatus by Light.— 
Light only excites the retina when it reaches its nerve end 
organs, the rods and cones. The proofs of this are several. 



Fig. 156. 

1. Light does not arouse visual sensations when it falls 
directly on the fibres of the optic nerve. Where this nerve 
enters there is a retinal part possessing only nerve-fibres, 
and this part is blind. Close the left eye and look steadily 
with the right at the cross in Fig. 156, holding the book verti¬ 
cally in front of the face, and moving it to and fro. It will 
be found that at about 25 centimeters (10 inches) off the 
white circle disappears ; but when the page is nearer or 
farther, it is seen. During the experiment the gaze must be 
kept fixed on the cross. There is thus in the field of vision a 
Mind spot , and it is easy to show by measurement that it lies 
where the optic nerve enters. 

When the right eye is fixed on the cross, it is so directed 
that rays from this fall on the yellow spot ( y , Fig. 157). 
The rays from the circle then cross the visual axis at the 
nodal point, n, and meet the retina at o. If the distance of 
the nodal point of the eye from the paper b ef, and from 



THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS . 


533 


the retina (which is 15mm.) be F, then the 
the paper, of the cross from the circle will be 
to the distance of y from o as / is to F. Meas¬ 
urements made in this way show that the circle 
disappears when its image is thrown on the 
entry of the optic nerve, which lies to the nasal 
side of the yellow spot. 

2. The above experiment having shown that 
light does not act directly on the optic nerve- 
fibres any more than it does on any other nerve- 
fibres, we have next to see in what part of the 
retina those changes do first occur which form 
the link between light and nervous impulses. 

They occur in the outer part of the retina , in 
the rods and cones. This is proved by what is 
called Purkinje’s experiment. Take a candle in¬ 
to a dark room and look at a surface not covered 
with any special pattern, say a whitewashed wall 
or a plain window-shade. Hold the candle to the side of one 
eye and close to it, but so far back that no light enters the 
pupil from it; that is so far back that the flame just can¬ 
not be seen, but so that a strong light is thrown on the white 
of the eye as far back as possible. Then move the candle a 
little to and fro. The surface looked at will appear luminous 
with reddish-yellow light, and on it will be seen dark branch¬ 
ing lines w'hich are the shadows of the retinal vessels. Now 
in order that these shadows may be seen the parts on which 
the light acts must be behind the vessels, that is in the outer 
layers of the retina since the blood vessels lie in its inner 
strata. The experiment may be more satisfactorily performed 
by getting another person to focus with a lens the light of 
the candle as a bright spot as far back as possible on the white 
of the observer’s eye. 

If the light be kept steady the vascular shadows soon dis¬ 
appear ; in order to continue to see them the candle must be 
kept moving. The explanation of this fact may readily be 
made clear by fixing the eyes for ten or fifteen seconds on the 
dot of an " i 99 somewhere about the middle of this page : at 
first the distinction between the slightly luminous black 
letters and the highly luminous white page is very obvious ; 
in other words, the different sensations arising from the 
strongly and the feebly excited areas of the retina. But if 





534 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the glance do not be allowed to wander, very soon the letters 
become indistinct and at last disappear altogether ; the whole 
page looks uniformly grayish. The reason of this is that the 
powerful stimulation of the retina by the light reflected from 
the white part of the page soon fatigues the part of the visual 
apparatus it acts upon ; and as this fatigue progresses the 
stimulus produces less and less effect. The parts of the 
retina, on the other hand, which receive light only from the 
black letters are but little stimulated and retain much of their 
original excitability, so that, at last, the feebler excitation act¬ 
ing upon these more irritable parts produces as much sensa¬ 
tion as the stronger stimulus acting upon the fatigued parts; 
and the letters become indistinguishable. To see them con¬ 
tinuously we must keep shifting the eyes so that the parts of 
the visual apparatus are alternately fatigued and rested, and 
the general irritability of the whole is kept about the same. 
So, in Purkinje’s experiment, if the position of the shadows 
remain the same, the shaded part of the retina soon becomes 
more irritable than the more excited unshaded parts, and its 
relative increase of irritability makes up for the less light 
falling on it, so that the shadows cease to be perceived. It is 
for this reason that we do not see the retinal vessels under ordi¬ 
nary circumstances. When light, as usual, enters the eye 
from front through the pupil the shadows always fall on the 
same parts of the retina, and these parts are thus kept suffi¬ 
ciently more excitable than the rest to make up for the less light 
reaching them through the vessels. To see the latter we 
must throw the light into the eye in an unusual direction, 
not through the pupil but laterally through the sclerotic. If 
v , Fig. 158, be the section of a retinal 
vessel, ordinarily its shadow will fall 
at some point on a line prolonged 
through it from the centre of the pupil. 
If a candle flame be held opposite b it 
illuminates that part of the sclerotic 
and from there light radiates and illu¬ 
mines the interior of the eye. The 
resulting sensation we refer to light 
entering the eye in the usual manner 
through the pupil, and accordingly see 
the surface we look at as if it were illuminated. The shadow 
of v , is now cast on an unusual spot c, and we see it as if at the 




THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


535 


point d on the wall, on the prolongation of the line joining 
the nodal point, k , of the eye with c. If the candle be moved 
so as to illuminate the point V of the sclerotic, the shadow of 
v will be cast on c ' and will accordingly seem on the wall to 
move from d to d'. It is clear that if we know how far b is 
from V, how far the wall is from the eye, and how far the 
nodal point is from the retina (15 mm. or 0.6 inch), and 
measure the distance on the wall from d to d ', we can calcu¬ 
late how far c is from c f : and then how far the vessel throwing 
the shadow must be in front of the retinal parts perceiving 
it. In this way it is found that the part seeing the shadow, 
that is the layer on which light acts, is just about as far be¬ 
hind the retinal vessels as the main vascular trunks of the 
retina are in front of the rod and cone layer. It is, there¬ 
fore, in that layer that the light initiates those changes which 
give rise to nervous impulses ; which is further made obvious 
by the fact that the seat of most acute vision is the fovea cen¬ 
tralis , where only this layer and the cone-fibres diverging 
from it are present. When we want to see anything dis¬ 
tinctly we always turn our eyes so that its image shall fall on 
the centres of the yellow spots. 

The Vision Purple. How light acts in the retina so as to 
produce nerve stimuli is still uncertain. Recent observations 
show that it produces chemical changes in the rod and cone 
layer, and seemed at first to indicate that its action was to 
produce'substances which were chemical excitants of nerve- 
fibres ; but although there can be little doubt that these 
chemical changes play some important part in vision, what 
their role may be is at present quite obscure. If a perfectly 
fresh retina be excised rapidly, its outer layers will be found 
of a ricl\ purple color. In daylight this rapidly bleaches, but 
in the dark persists even when putrefaction has set in. In 
pure yellow light it also remains unbleached a long time, but 
in other lights disappears at different rates. If a rabbit’s eye 
be fixed immovably and exposed so that an image of a window 
is focused on the same part of its retina for some time, and 
then the eye be rapildy excised in the dark and placed in 
solution of potash alum, a colorless image of the window is 
found on the retina, surrounded by the visual purple of the 
rest which is, through the alum, fixed or rendered incapable 
of change by light. Photographs, or optograms, are thus ob¬ 
tained which differ from the photographer’s in that he uses 


536 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


light to produce chemical changes which give rise to colored 
bodies, while here the reverse is the case. If the eye be not 
rapidly excised and put in the alum after its exposure, the 
optogram will disappear ; the vision purple being rapidly re¬ 
generated at the bleached part. This reproduction of it is 
due mainly to the cells of the pigmentary layer of the retina, 
which in living eyes exposed to light thrust long processes 
between the rods and cones. Portions of frogs’ retinas raised 
from this, bleach more rapidly than those left in contact with 
it, but become soon purple again if let fall back upon the 
pigment-cells. Experiments show, however, that animals 
(frogs) exposed for a long time to a bright light may have 
their retinas completely bleached and still see very well; they 
can still unerringly catch flies that come within their reach ; 
and they can also distinguish colors, or at least some colors, 
as green. Moreover, the vision purple is only found in the 
outer segments of the rods ; there is none in the cones, and 
yet these alone exist in the yellow spot of the human eye, 
which is the seat of most acute vision; and animals, such as 
snakes, which have only cones in the retina, possess no vision 
purple and nevertheless see very well. 

It may be that other bodies exist in the retina which are 
also chemically changed by light, but the changes of which 
are not accompanied by alterations in color which we can see; 
and, in the absence of the vision purple, seeing might be 
carried on by means of these, which may be less quickly 
destroyed by light and so still persist in the bleached retinas 
of the frogs above mentioned. For the present, however, the 
question of the part, if any, played in vision by such bodies 
must be left an open one : and the possibility that the rods 
and cones form an apparatus which directly converts ethereal 
vibrations into nerve stimuli without any intervening chemi¬ 
cal process must be borne in mind. 

The Intensity of Visual Sensations. Light considered as 
a form of energy may vary in quantity ; physiologically, also, 
we distinguish quantitative differences in light as degrees of 
brightness, but the connection between the intensity of the 
sensation excited and the quantity of energy represented by 
the stimulating light is not a direct one. In the first place, 
some rays excite our visual apparatus more powerfully than 
others : a given amount of energy in the form of yellow light, 
for example, causes more powerful visual sensations than the 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


537 


same quantity of energy in the form of violet light; and ultra¬ 
violet rays only become visible, and then very faintly, when 
all others are suppressed; but if they be passed through some 
fluorescent substance (see Physics), such as an acid solution 
of quinine sulphate, which, without altering the amount of 
energy, turns it into ethereal oscillations of a longer period, 
then the light becomes readibly perceptible. 

Even with light-rays of the same oscillation period our sen¬ 
sation is not proportional to the amount of energy in the 
light; to the amount of heat, for example, to which it would 
give rise if all transformed into it. If objective light increase 
gradually in amount our sensation increases also, up to a limit 
beyond which it does not go, no matter how strong the light 
becomes; but the increase of sensation takes place far more 
slowly than that of the light, in accordance with the psycho¬ 
physical law already mentioned. If we call the amount of 
light given out by a single candle a, then that emitted by two 
candles will be 2 a; and so on. If the amount of sensation 
excited by the single candle be A, then that due to two can¬ 
dles will not be 2 A, and that by three will be far less than 3 A. 
If a white surface, P, Fig 159, be illuminated by a candle at 
c and another elsewhere, and a rod, o, be placed so as to in¬ 
tercept the light from c, but not 
that from the other candle, we see 
clearly a shadow, since our eyes 
recognize the difference in luminos¬ 
ity of this part of the paper, reflect¬ 
ing light from one candle only, from 
that of the rest which is illuminated 
by two: that is we can tell the sensation due to the stimulus 
a from that due to the stimulus 2 a.) If now a bright lamp be 
brought in and placed alongside, and its light be physically 
equal to that of 10 candles, we cease to perceive the shadows. 
We find the sensation aroused by objective light = 12 a (due 
to the lamp and two candles) cannot be told from that due to 
light = 11 a; although the difference of objective light is still 
la as before. Most persons must have observed illustrations 
of this. Sitting in a room with three lights not unfrequently 
some object so intercepts the light from two as to cast on the 
wall two shadows which partly overlap. Where the shadows 
overlap the wall gets light only from the third candle; around 
that, where each shadow is separate, it is illuminated by this 








538 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


and one other candle; and the wall in the neighborhood of 
the shadows by all three. Objectively, therefore, the differ¬ 
ence between the deep shadow and half shadow is that 
between the light of one candle and that of two. The differ¬ 
ence between the half shadows and the wall around is that 
between the light of two and three candles. But as a matter 
of sensation the difference between the half shadow and the 
full shadow seems much greater than that between the 
half shadow and the rest of the wall; in other words the 
difference, a, between a and 2a, is a more efficient stimulus 
than the same difference, a, between 2a and 3 a. When the 
total stimulus increases the same absolute difference is less 
felt or may be entirely unperceived. An example of this 
which every one will recognize is afforded by the invisibility 
of the stars in daytime. 

On the other hand, as the total stimulus increases or de¬ 
creases the same fractional difference of the whole is per¬ 
ceived with the same ease; i.e., excites the same amount of 
sensation. In reading a book by lamplight we perceive 
clearly the difference between the amount of light reflected 
from the black letters and the white page. If we call the 
total lamplight reflected by the blank parts 10a and that by 
the letters 2a, we may say we perceive with a certain distinct¬ 
ness a luminous difference equal to one fifth of the whole. 
If we now take the book into the daylight the total light re¬ 
flected from the letters and the unprinted part of the page 
increases, but in the same proportion. Say the one now is 
50 a and the other 10a; although the absolute difference be¬ 
tween the two is now 40 a instead of 8a we do not see the 
letters any more plainly than before. The smallest difference 
in luminous intensity which we can perceive is about T iy of 
the whole, for all the range of lights we use in carrying on 
our ordinary occupations. For strong lights the smallest per¬ 
ceptible fraction is considerably greater; finally we reach a 
limit where no increase in brightness is felt. For weak 
illumination the sensation is more nearly proportioned to the 
total differences of the objective light. Thus in a dark room 
an object reflecting all the little light that reaches it appears 
almost twice as bright as one reflecting only half; in a 
stronger light it would so appear. Bright objects in general 
obscurity thus appear unnaturally bright when compared 
with things about them, and indeed often look self-luminous. 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


539 


A cat’s eyes, for example, are said to "shine in the dark”; 
and painters to produce moonlight effects always make the 
bright parts of a picture relatively brighter, when compared 
with things about them, than would be the case if a sunny 
•scene were to be represented; by a relatively excessive use of 
white pigment they produce the relatively great brightness of 
those things which are seen at all in the general obscurity of 
a moonlight landscape. 

The Duration of Luminous Sensations.—This is greater 
than that of the stimulus, a fact taken advantage of in rnak- 
ing fireworks: an ascending rocket produces the sensation of 
a trail of light extending far behind the position of the bright 
part of the rocket itself at the moment, because the sensation 
aroused by it in a lower part of its course still persists. So, 
•shooting stars appear to have luminous tails behind them. 
By rotating rapidly before the eye a disk with alternate white 
and black sectors we get for each point of the retina on 
which a part of its image falls, alternating stimulation (due 
to the passage of white sector) and rest (when a black sector 
is passing). If the rotation be rapid enough the sensation 
aroused is that of a uniform gray, such as would be produced 
if the white and black were mixed and spread evenly over 
the disk. In each revolution the eye gets as much light as if 
that were the case, and is unable to distinguish that this 
light is made up of separate portions reaching it at intervals: 
the stimulation due to each lasts until the next begins and so 
all are fused together. If, while looking at the flame, one 
turns out suddenly the gas in a room containing no other 
light, the image of the flame persists a short time after the 
flame itself is extinguished. 

The Localizing Power of the Retina.—As already pointed 
out a necessary condition of seeing definite objects, as distin¬ 
guished from the power of recognizing differences of light 
and darkness, is that all light entering the eye from one point 
•of an object shall be focused on one point of the retina. 
This, however, would not be of any use had we not the faculty 
-of distinguishing the stimulation of one part of the retina 
from that of another part. This power the visual apparatus 
possesses in a very high degree; while with the skin we can¬ 
not distinguish from one, two points touching it less than 1 
mm. (g 1 ^ inch) apart, with our eyes we can distinguish two 
points whose retinal images are not more than .004 mm. 


540 


TI1E HUMAN BODY. 


(.00016 inch) apart. The distance between the retinal images 
of two points is determined by the “visual angle” under 
which they are seen; this angle is that included between 
lines drawn from them to the nodal point of the eye. If a 
and b (Fig. 160) are luminous points, the image of a wiU b& 



Fig. 160. 


formed at a ' on the prolongation of the line a n joining a 
with the node, n. Similarly the image of b will be formed 
at b'. If a and b still remaining the same distance apart, be 
moved nearer the eye to c and d , then the visual angle 
under which they are seen will be greater and their retinal 
images will be farther apart, at c ' and d'. If a and b are the 
highest and lowest parts of an object, the distance between 
their retinal images will then depend, clearly, not only on the 
size of the object, but on its distance from the eye; to know 
the discriminating power of the retina we must therefore 
measure the visual angle in each case. In the fovea centralis 
two objects seen under a visual angle of 50 to 70 seconds can 
be distinguished from one another; this gives for the distance 
between the retinal images that above mentioned, and corre¬ 
sponds pretty accurately to the diameter of a cone in that 
part of the retina. We may conclude, therefore, that when 
two images fall on the same cone or on two contiguous cones 
they are not discriminated; but that if one or more unstimu¬ 
lated cones intervene between the stimulated, the points may 
be perceived as distinct. The diameter of a rod or cone, in 
fact, marks the anatomical limit up to which we can by prac¬ 
tice raise our acuteness of visual discrimination; and in the 
yellow spot which we constantly use all our lives in looking 
at things which we want to see distinctly, we have educated 
the visual apparatus up to about its highest power. Else¬ 
where on the retina our discriminating power is much less 
and diminishes as the distance from the yellow spot increases. 
This is partly due, no doubt, to a less sensibility of those reti¬ 
nal regions, such as, by other facts, is proved to exist, but in 
part, no doubt is also due to a want of practice. The more 







THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


541 


peripheral the retinal region the less we have used it for such 
purposes. It is probable, therefore, that outlying portions of 
the retina are capable of education to a higher discriminating 
power, just as we shall find the skin to be for tactile stimuli. 

While we can tell the stimulation of an upper part of the 
retina from a lower, or a right region from a left, it must be 
borne in mind that we have no direct knowledge of which is 
upper or lower or right or left in the ocular image. All our 
visual sensations tell us is that they are aroused at different 
points, and nothing at all about the actual positions of these 
on the ratina. There is no other eye behind the retina look¬ 
ing at it to see the inversion of the image formed on it. 
Suppose I am looking at a pane in a second-story window 
of a distant house: its image will then fall on the fovea cen¬ 
tralis ; the line joining this with the pane is called the visual 
axis. The image of the roof will be formed on a part of the 
retina below the fovea, and that of the front door above it. I 
distinguish that the images of all these fall on different parts 
of the retina in certain relative positions, and have learnt, by 
the experience of all my life, that when the image of any¬ 
thing arouses the sensation due to excitation of part of the 
retina below the fovea the object is above my visual axis, and 
vice versa ; similarly with right and left. Consequently 1 in¬ 
terpret the stimulation of lower retinal regions as meaning 
high objects, and of right retinal regions as meaning left ob¬ 
jects, and never get confused by the inverted retinal image 
about which directly I know nothing. A new-born child, 
even supposing it could use its muscles perfectly, could not, 
except by mere chance, reach towards an object which it saw; 
it would grasp at random, not yet having learnt that to reach 
an object exciting a part of the retina above the fovea needed 
movement of the hand towards a position in space below the 
visual axis ; but very soon it learns that things near its brow, 
that is up, excite certain visual sensations, and objects below 
its eyes others, and similarly with regard to right and left; in 
time it learns to interpret retinal stimuli so as to localize 
accurately the direction, with reference to its eyes, of outer 
objects, and never thenceforth gets puzzled by retinal inver¬ 
sion. 

Color Vision. —Sunlight reflected from snow gives us a, 
sensation which we call white. The same light sent through 
a prism and reflected from a white surface excites in us no 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


M2 

white sensation but a number of color sensations, gradating 
insensibly from red to violet, through orange, yellow, green, 
blue-green, blue, and indigo. The prism separates from one 
another light-rays of different periods of oscillation and each 
ray excites in us a colored visual sensation, while all mixed 
together, as in sunlight, they arouse the entirely different 
sensation of white. If the light fall on a piece of black 
velvet we get still another sensation, that of black; iu this 
case the light-rays are so absorbed that but few are reflected 
to the eye and the visual apparatus is left at rest. Physically 
black represents nothing: it is a mere zero—the absence of 
ethereal vibrations; but, in consciousness, it is as definite a 
sensation as white, red, or any other color. We do not feel 
blackness or darkness except over the region of the possible 
visual field of our eyes. In a perfectly dark room we only 
feel the darkness in front of our eyes, and in the light there 
is no such sensation associated with the back of our heads or 
the palms of our hands, though through these we get no 
visual sensations. It is obvious, therefore, that the sensation 
of blackness is not due to the mere absence of luminous 
stimuli, but to the unexcited state of the retinas, which are 
alone capable of being excited by such stimuli when present. 
This fact is a very remarkable one, and is not paralleled in any 
other sense. Physically, complete stillness is to the ear what 
darkness is to the eye; but silence impresses itself on us as 
the absence of sensation, while darkness causes a definite 
feeling of “ blackness. ” 

Young’s Theory of Color Vision.—Our color sensations 
insensibly fade into one another; starting with black we can 
insensibly pass through lighter and lighter shades of gray 
to white: or beginning with green through darker and darker 
shades of it to black or through lighter and lighter to white: 
or beginning with red we can by imperceptible steps pass to 
orange, from that to yellow and so on to the end of the solar 
spectrum: and from the violet, through purple and carmine, 
we may get back again to red. Black and white appear to be 
fundamental color sensations mixed up with all the rest: we 
never imagine a color but as light or dark, that is as more or 
less near white or black; and it is found that as the light 
thrown on any given colored surface weakens, the shade be¬ 
comes deeper until it passes into black; and if the illumina¬ 
tion be increased, the color becomes “lighter” until it passes 


THL EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


543 


into white. Of all the colors of the spectrum yellow most 
easily passes into white with strong illumination. Black and 
white, with the grays which are mixtures of the two, thus 
seem to stand apart from all the rest as the fundamental 
visual sensations, and the others alone are in common par¬ 
lance named “ colors.” It has even been suggested that the 
power of differentiating them in sensation has only lately 
been acquired by man, and a certain amount of evidence has 
been adduced from passages in the Iliad to prove that the 
Greeks in Homer’s time confused together colors that are 
very different to most modern eyes; at any rate there seems 
to be no doubt that the color sense can be greatly improved 
by practice; women whose mode of dress causes them to pay 
more attention to the matter, have, as a general rule, a more 
acute color sense than men. 

Leaving aside black, white, gray, and the various browns 
(which are only dark tints of other colors), we may enumer¬ 
ate our color sensations as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, 
violet, or purple; between each there are, however, numerous 
transition shades, as yellow-green, blue-green, etc., so that 
the number which shall have definite names given to them is 
to a large extent arbitrary. Of the above, all but purple are 
found in the spectrum given when sunlight is separated by a 
prism into its rays of different refrangibility; rays of a cer¬ 
tain wave-length or period of oscillation cause in us the feel¬ 
ing red; others yellow, and so on; for convenience we may 
speak of these as red, yellow, blue, etc., rays; all together, in 
about equal proportions, they arouse the sensation of white. 
A remarkable fact is that most color feelings can be aroused 
in several ways. White, for example, not only by the above 
general mixture, but red and blue-green rays, or orange and 
blue, or yellow and violet * taken in pairs in certain propor¬ 
tions, and acting simultaneously or in very rapid succession 
on the same part of the retina, cause the sensation of white: 
such colors are called complementary to one another. The 
mixture may be made in several ways; as, for example, by 
causing the red and blue-green parts of the spectrum to 
overlap, or by painting red and blue-green sectors on a disk 
and rotating it rapidly; they cannot be made, however, by 
mixing pigments, since what happens in such cases is a very 
complex phenomenon. Painters, for example, are accustomed 
to produce green by mixing blue and yellow paints, and some 


544 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


may be inclined to ridicule the statement that yellow and 
blue when mixed give white. When, however, we mix the 
pigments we do not combine the sensations of the same name, 
which is the matter in question. Blue paint is blue because it 
absorbs all the rays of the sunlight except the blue and some 
of the green; yellow is yellow because it absorbs all but the 
yellow and some of the green, and when blue and yellow are 
mixed the blue absorbs all the distinctive part of the yellow 
and the yellow does the same for the blue; and so only the 
green is left over to reflect light to the eye, and the mixture 
has that color. Grass-green has no complementary color in 
in the solar spectrum; but with purple, which is made by 
mixing red and blue, it gives white. Several other colors 
taken three together, give also the sensation of white. If 
then we call the light-rays which arouse in us the sensation 
red, a, those giving us the sensation orange b, yellow c, and 
so on, we find that we get the sensation white with a , b , c , d y 
e , /, and g all together; or with b and e y or with c and /, or 
with a , d , and e ; our sensation white has no determinate re¬ 
lation to ethereal oscillations of a given period, and the same 
is true for several other colors; yellow feeling, for example, 
may be excited by ethereal vibrations of one given wave¬ 
length (spectral yellow), or by a light containing only such 
waves as taken separately cause the sensations red and grass- 
green; in other words a physical light in which there are no 
waves of the “yellow” length may cause in us the sensation 
yellow, which is only one more instance of the general fact 
that our sensations, as such, give us no direct information as 
to the nature of external forces; they are but signs which we 
have to interpret. The doctrine of specific nerve energies 
makes it highly improbable that our different color sensa¬ 
tions can all be due to different modes of excitation of exactly 
the same nerve-fibres; a fibre which when excited alone gives 
us the sensation red will always give us that feeling when 
so excited. The simplest method of explaining our color 
sensations would therefore be to assume that for each there 
exists in the retina a set of nerve-fibres with appropriate 
terminal organs, each excitable by its own proper stimu¬ 
lus. But we can distinguish so innumerable and so finely 
graded colors, that, on such a supposition, there must be an 
almost infinite number of different end organs in the retina, 
and it is more reasonable to suppose that there are a limited 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


545 


number of primary color sensations, and that the rest are due 
to combinations of these. That a compound color sensation 
may be very different from its components when these are 
regarded apart, is clearly shown by the sensation white 
aroused either by what we may call red and blue-green, or 
green and purple, stimuli acting together; or of yellow due 
to grass-green and red. To account for our various color sen¬ 
sations we may, therefore, assume a much smaller number of 
primary sensations than the total number of color sensations 
we experience; all can in fact be explained by assuming any 
three primary color sensations which together give white, and 
regarding all the rest as due to mixtures of these in various 
proportions; there may be more than three, but three will 
account for all the phenomena, black being a sensation expe¬ 
rienced when all visual stimuli are absent. This is known as 
Young’s theory of color vision, and is that at present most 
commonly accepted. The selection of the three primary sen¬ 
sations is decided by the phenomena of color-blindness, which 
show that if this theory of color vision be correct red must 
be one of the primary color sensations: if so, then green 
and violet must be the other two. The theory further 
assumes that all kinds of light stimulating the end appa¬ 
ratuses give rise to all three sensations, but not necessarily in 
the same proportion. When all are equally aroused the sen¬ 
sation is white or some shade of gray when the red and green 
are tolerably powerfully excited and the violet little, the sen¬ 
sation is yellow; when the green powerfully and the red and 
violet little, the sensation is green, and so on. In this way 
we can also explain the fact that all colored surfaces when 
intensely illuminated pass into white. A red light, for ex¬ 
ample, excites the primary red sensation most, but green and 
violet a little; as the light becomes stronger a limit is 
reached beyond which the red sensation cannot go, but the 
green and violet go on increasing with the intensity of the 
light, until they too reach their limits; and all three primary 
sensations being then equally aroused, the sensation white is 
produced. 

Color Blindness. Some persons fail to distinguish colors 
which are to others quite different; when such a deficiency is 
well marked it is known as “ color blindness,” and, assuming 
Young’s theory to be correct, it may be explained by an ab¬ 
sence of one or more of the three primary color sensations; 


546 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


observation of color-blind persons thus helps in deciding 
which these are. The most common form is red color blind¬ 
ness; persons afflicted with it confuse reds and greens. Red 
to the normal eye is red because it excites red sensation 
much, green some, and violet less; and a white page white, 
because it excites red, green, and violet sensations about 
equally. In a person without red sensation a red object 
would arouse only some green and violet sensation and so would 
be indistinguishable from a bluish green; in practice it is. 
found that many persons confound these colors. Cases of 
green and violet color blindness are also met with, but they 
are much rarer than the red color blindness or “ Daltonism." 

The detection of color blindness is often a matter 
of considerable importance, especially in sailors and railroad 
officials, since the two colors most commonly confounded, red 
and green, are those used in maritime and railroad signals. 
Persons attach such different names to colors that a decision 
as to color blindness cannot be safely arrived at by simply 
showing a color and asking its name. The best plan is to 
take a heap of worsted of all tints, select one, say a red, and 
tell the man to put alongside it all those of the same color, 
whether of a lighter or a darker shade; if red blind he will 
select not only the reds but the greens, especially the paler 
tints. About one man in eight is more or less red blind. 
The defect is much rarer in women. 

Fatigue of the Retina. The nervous visual apparatus is 
easily fatigued. Usually we do not observe this because its 
restoration is also rapid, and in ordinary life our eyes, when 
open, are never at rest; we move them to and fro, so that 
parts of the retina receive light alternately from brighter and 
darker objects and are alternately excited and rested. How 
constant and habitual the movement of the eyes is can be 
readily observed by trying to fix for a short time a small spot 
without deviating the glance; to do so for even a few seconds 
is impossible without practice. If any small object is steadily 
“ fixed ” for twenty or thirty seconds it will be found that the 
whole field of vision becomes grayish and obscure, because 
the parts of the retina receiving most light get fatigued, and 
arouse no more sensation than those less fatigued and stimu¬ 
lated by light from less illuminated objects. Or look steadily 
at a black object, say a blot on a white page, for twenty 
seconds, and then turn the eye on a white wall; the latter 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


547 


will seem dark gray, with a white patch on it; an effect due 
to the greater excitability- of the retinal parts previously 
rested by the black, when compared with the sensation 
aroused elsewhere by light from the white wall acting on the 
previously stimulated parts of the visual surface. All persons 
will recall many instances of such phenomena, which are es¬ 
pecially noticeable soon after rising in the morning. Similar 
things may be noticed with colors; after looking at a red 
patch the eye turned on a white wall sees a blue-green patch; 
the elements causing red sensations having been fatigued, the 
white, mixed light from the wall now excites on that region 
of the retina only the other primary color sensations. The 
blending of colors so as to secure their greatest effect depends 
on this fact; red and green go well together because each 
rests the parts of the visual apparatus most excited by the 
other, and so each appears bright and vivid as the eye wan¬ 
ders to and fro; while red and 'orange together, each exciting 
and exhausting mainly the same visual elements, render dull, 
or in popular phrase “ kill,” one another. 

Contrasts. If a well-defined black surface be looked at on 
a larger white one the parts of the latter close to the black look 
whiter than the rest, and the parts of the black near the 
white blacker than the rest; so, also, if a green patch be 
looked at on a red surface each color is heightened near where 
they meet. This phenomenon is largely due to fatigue and 
deficient fixation: the retinal parts not excited and fatigued 
by the black or the green are brought by a movement of the 
organ so as to receive light from the white or red surface; 
phenomena due to this cause are known as those of successive 
contrast. Even in the case of perfect fixation, however, some¬ 
thing of the same kind is seen; black looks blacker near 
white and green greener near red when the eye has not 
moved in the least from one to the other. A small piece of 
light gray paper put on a sheet of red, which latter is then 
covered accurately with a sheet of semi-transparent tissue- 
paper, assumes the complementary color of the red, i.e., iooxs 
bluish green; and gray on a green sheet under similar cir¬ 
cumstances looks pink. Such phenomena are known as those 
of simultaneous contrast, and are explained on psychological 
grounds by those who accept Young’s theory of color vision. 
Just as a medium-sized man looks short beside a tall one, so, 
it is said, a black surface looks blacker near a white one, or a 


548 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


gray (slightly luminous white) surface, which feebly excites 
red, green, and violet sensations, looks deficient in red (and so 
bluish green) near a deeper red surface. There are, however, 
certain phenomena of simultaneous contrast which cannot be 
satisfactorily so explained, and these have led to other theories 
of color vision, the most important of which is that described 
in the next paragraph. 

Hering’s Theory of Vision. Contrasts can be seen with 
the eyes closed and covered. If we look a short time at a 
bright object and then rapidly exclude light from the eye, we 
see for a moment a positive after-image of the object, e.g. f 
a window with its frame and panes after a glance at it and 
then closing the eyes. In these positive after-images the 
bright and dark parts of the object which was looked at retain 
their original relationship; they depend on the persistence of 
retinal excitement after the cessation of the stimulus and 
usually soon disappear. If an object be looked at steadily for 
some time, say twenty seconds, and the eyes be then closed, a 
negative after-image is seen. In this the lights and shades of 
the object looked at are reversed. Frequently a positive 
after-image becomes negative before disappearing. The 
negative images are explained commonly by fatigue; when the 
eye is closed some light still enters through the lids and ex¬ 
cites less those parts of the retina previously exhausted by 
prolonged looking at the brighter parts of the field of vision; 
or, when all light is rigorously excluded, the self stimula¬ 
tion of the visual apparatus itself, causing the idio-retinal 
light , affects less the exhausted portions, and so a negative 
image is produced. If we fix steadily for thirty seconds a 
point between two white squares about 4 mm. (£ inch) 
apart on a large black sheet, and then close and cover our 
eyes, we get a negative after-image in which are seen two 
dark squares on a brighter surface; this surface is brighter 
close around the negative after-image of each square, and 
brightest of all between them. This luminous boundary is 
called the corona , and is explained usually as an effect of 
simultaneous contrast; the dark after-image of the square it 
is said makes us mentally err in judgment and think the 
clear surface close to it brighter than elsewhere; and it is 
brightest between the two dark squares, just as a middlo-sized 
man between two tall ones looks shorter than if alongside one 
only. If, however, the after-image he watched it will often 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


549 


be noticed not only that the light band between the squares 
is intensely white, much more so than the normal idio-retinal 
light, but, as the image fades away, often the two dark after¬ 
images of the squares disappear entirely with all of the 
corona, except that part between them which is still seen as a 
bright band on a uniform grayish field. Here there is no 
contrast to produce the error of judgment, and from this and 
other experiments Hering concludes that light acting on one 
part of the retina produces inverse changes in all the rest, 
and that this has an important part in producing the phe¬ 
nomena of contrasts. Similar phenomena may be observed 
with colored objects; in their negative after-images each tint 
is represented by its complementary, as black is by white in 
colorless vision. 

Endeavoring to exclude such loose general explanations as 
“errors of judgment,” Hering proposes a theory of vision 
which can only be briefly stated here. We may put all 
cur colorless sensations in a continuous series, passing through 
grays from the deepest black to the brightest white; some¬ 
where half-way between will be a neutral gray which is as 
black as it is white. AVe may do something similar with our 
color sensations; as in gray we see black and white so in 
purple we see red and blue, and all colors containing red and 
blue may be put in a series of which one end is pure red, the 
other pure blue. So with red and yellow, blue and green, 
yellow and green. If we call to mind the whole solar spec¬ 
trum from yellow to blue, through the yellow-greens, green, 
and blue-greens, we get a series in which all but the ter¬ 
minals have this in common that they contain some green. 

Green itself forms, however, a special point; it differs from 

all tints on one side of it in containing no yellow, and from 
all on the other in containing no blue. In ordinary language 
this is recognized: we give it a definite name of its own and 

call it green. Its simplicity compared with the doubleness 

of its immediate neighbors entitles it to a distinct place in 
the color-sensation series. There are three other color sensa¬ 
tions which like green are simple and must have specific 
names of their own; they are red, blue, and yellow. Green 
mnv be pure green or yellow-green or blue-green, but never 
yeli >'.v and bluish at once, or reddish. Red may be pure or 
yellowish or bluish, but never greenish. Red and green are 
thus mutually exclusive; yellow and blue stand in a similar 


550 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


relationship. All other color sensations, as orange, suggest 
two of the above, and may be described as mixtures of them; 
but they themselves stand out as fundamental color sensa¬ 
tions. Moreover, it follows from the above, that more than 
two simple color sensations are never combined in a com¬ 
pound color sensation. 

Since red always excludes green, and yellow blue, we may 
call them anti-colors (the complementary colors of Young’s 
theory), and are led to suspect that in the visual organ there 
must occur, in the production of each, processes which pre¬ 
vent the simultaneous production of the other, since there is 
no a priori reason in the nature of things why we should not 
see red and green simultaneously, as well as red and yellow. 
Along with our color sensations there is always some color¬ 
less from the black-white series; which we recognize in speak¬ 
ing of lighter and darker shades of the same color. 

Hering assumes, then, in the retina or some part of the 
nervous visual apparatus, three substances answering to the 
black-white, red-green, and yellow-blue sensational series, the 
construction of each substance being attended with one sen¬ 
sation of its pair, and its destruction with the other. Thus, 
when construction of the black-white substance exceeds de¬ 
struction, we get a blackish-gray sensation; when the pro¬ 
cesses are equal the neutral gray; when destruction exceeds 
construction a light-gray, and so on. In the other color 
series similar things would occur; when construction of red- 
green substance exceeded destruction in any point of the 
retina we would get, say, a red feeling; if so, then excess of 
destruction would give green sensation. The intensity of 
any given simple sensation would depend on the ratio of the 
difference between the construction and destruction of the 
corresponding substance, to the sum of all the constructions 
and destructions of visual substances going on in that part of 
the visual apparatus : in this way anabolic and katabolic 
nutritive processes would be the material basis of visual sen¬ 
sations. The intensity of a mixed color sensation would be 
the sum of the intensities of its factors, and its tint and 
shade dependent on the relative proportion of these factors. 
When the construction and destruction of the red-green sub¬ 
stance are equal no color sensation is aroused by it; and we 
get gray, due to those simultaneously occurring changes in 
the black-white substance which are always present, but were 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


551 


previously more or less cloaked by the results of the changes 
in the red-green substance. Red and green in certain pro¬ 
portions cause then a white or gray sensation, not because 
they supplement one another, as on Young’s theory, but be¬ 
cause they mutually cancel; and so for other complementary 
colors. 

Moreover, according to Hering, destruction of a visual sub¬ 
stance going on in one region of the retina promotes con¬ 
struction and accumulation of that substance elsewhere, but 
especially in the neighborhood of the excited spot. Hence, 
when a white square on a black ground is looked at, destruc¬ 
tion of the black white substance overbalances construction 
in the place, on which the image of the square falls, but 
around this construction occurs in a high degree. When the 
eyes are shut, this latter retinal region, with its great accumu¬ 
lation of decomposable material, is highly irritable and, 
under the internal stimuli causing the idio-retinal light, 
breaks down comparatively fast, causing the corona, which 
may be intensely luminous; for with the closed eye the total 
constructive and destructive processes in the visual apparatus 
are small, and so the excess of destruction in the coronal 
region bears a large ratio to the sum of the whole processes. 
The student must apply this theory for himself to the other 
phenomena of contrasts and negative images, as also to the 
gradual disappearance of differences between light and dark 
objects when looked at for a time with steady fixation; the 
general key being the principle that anything leading to the 
accumulation of a visual substance increases its decomposi¬ 
tions under given stimulation, and vice versa. The main 
value of Hering’s theory is that it attempts to account 
physiologically for phenomena previously indefinitely ex¬ 
plained psychologically by such terms as “ errors of judg¬ 
ment,” which really leave the whole matter where it was, 
since if (as we must believe) mind is a function of brain, the 
errors of judgment have still to be accounted for on physio¬ 
logical grounds, as due to conditions of the nervous system. 

The three visual substances, the anabolisms and katabol- 
isms of which according to Hering give rise to color sensa¬ 
tions, need not necessarily be in the retina itself: they may 
be in the central nerve portions of the visual apparatus, 
being excited through different nerve fibres excited by dif¬ 
ferent lights falling on the retina. 


552 


TIIE HU MAX BODY. 


There are difficulties in the way of the full acceptance of 
either the Young (often called the Young-Helmholtz) theory 
or the theory of Hering, and the whole doctrine of color 
vision is still in a very unsettled state. 

Visual Perceptions. The sensations which light excites 
in us we interpret as indications of the existence, form, and 
position of external objects. The conceptions which we 
arrive at in this way are known as visual perceptions. The 
full treatment of perceptions belongs to the domain of 
Psychology, but Physiology is concerned with the conditions 
under which they are produced. 

The Visual Perception of Distance. With one eye our 
perception of distance is very imperfect, as illustrated by the 
common trick of holding a ring suspended by a string in 
front of a person’s face, and telling him to shut one eye and 
pass a rod from one side through the ring. If a pen-holder 
be held erect before one eye, while the other is closed, and 
an attempt be made to touch it with a finger moved across 
towards it, an error will nearly always be made. (If the 
finger be moved straight on towards the pen it will be 
touched because with one eye we can estimate direction accu¬ 
rately and have only to go on moving the finger in the proper 
direction till it meets the object.) In such cases we get the 
only clue from the amount of effort needed to “accommo¬ 
date” the eye to see the object distinctly. When we use 
both eyes our perception of distance is much better; when 
we look at an object with two eyes the visual axes are con¬ 
verged on it, and the nearer the object the greater the con¬ 
vergence. We have a pretty accurate knowledge of the 
degree of muscular effort required to converge the eyes on 
all tolerably near points. When objects are farther off, their 
apparent size, and the modifications of their retinal images 
brought about by aerial perspective, come in to help. The 
relative distance of objects is easiest determined by moving 
the eyes; all stationary objects then appear displaced in the 
opposite direction (as for example when we look out of 
the window of a railway car) and those nearest most rapidly; 
from the different apparent rates of movement we can tell 
which are farther and nearer. We so inseparably and uncon¬ 
sciously bind up perceptions of distance with the sensations 
aroused by objects looked at, that we seem to see distance; 
it seems at first thought as definite a sensation as color. 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


553 


That it is not is shown by cases of persons born blind, who 
have had sight restored later in life by surgical operations. 
Such persons have at first no visual perceptions of distance: 
all objects seem spread out on a flat surface in contact with 
the eyes, and they only learn gradually to interpret their 
sensations so as to form judgments about distances, as the 
rest of us did unconsciously in childhood before we thought 
about such things. 

The Visual Perception of Size. The dimensions of the 
retinal image determine primarily the sensations on which 
conclusions as to size are based; and the larger the visual 
angle the larger the retinal image: since the visual angle de¬ 
pends on the distance of an object the correct perception of 
size depends largely upon a correct perception of distance; 
having formed a judgment, conscious or unconscious, as to 
that, we conclude as to size from the extent of the retinal 
region affected. Most people have been surprised now and 
then to find that what appeared a large bird in the clouds 
was only a small insect close to the eye; the large apparent 
size being due to the previous incorrect judgment as to the 
distance of the object. The presence of an object of toler¬ 
ably well-known height, as a man, also assists in forming 
conceptions (by comparison) as to size; artists for this pur¬ 
pose frequently introduce human figures to assist in giving 
an idea of the size of other objects represented. 

The Visual Perception of a Third Dimension of Space. 
This is very imperfect with one eye; still we can thus arrive 
at Conclusions from the distribution of light and shade on an 
object, and from that amount of knowledge as to the relative 
distance of different points which is attainable monocularly; 
the different visual angles under which objects are seen also 
assist us in concluding that objects are farther and nearer, 
and so are not spread out on a plane before the eye, but 
occupy depth also. Painters depend mainly on devices of 
these kinds for representing solid bodies, and objects spread 
over the visual field in the third dimension of space. 

Single Vision with Two Eyes. When we look at a flat 
object with both eyes we get a similar retinal image in each. 
Under ordinary circumstances we see, however, not two ob¬ 
jects but one. In the habitual use of the eyes we move them 
so that the images of the object looked at fall on the two 
yellow spots. A point to the left of this object forms its 


554 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


image on the inner (right) side of the left eye and the outer 
(right) side of the right. An object vertically above that 
looked at would form an image straight below the yellow 
spot of each eye; an object to the left and above, its image 
to the inner side and below in the left eye and • to the 
outer side and below in the right eye; and so on. We 
have learned that similar simultaneous excitations of these 
corresponding points mean single objects, and so interpret 
our sensations. This at least is the theory of the experi¬ 
ential or empirical school of psychologists, though others be¬ 
lieve we have a sort of intuition on the subject. When the 
eyes do not work together, as in the muscular incoordination 
of one stage of intoxication, then they are not turned so that 
images of the same objects fall on corresponding retinal 
points, and the person sees double. When a squint comes 
on, as from paralysis of the external rectus of one eye, the 
sufferer at first sees double for the same reason, but after a 
time he makes new associations of corresponding retinal 
points, and this is in favor of the empirical theory. 

When a given object is looked at, lines drawn from it 
through the nodal points reach the fovea centralis in each 
eye. Lines so drawn at the same time from a more distant 
object diverge less and meet each retina on the inner side of 
its fovea; but as above pointed out the corresponding points 
for each retinal region on the inside of the left eye, are on 
the outside of the right, and vice versa. Hence the more 
distant object is seen double. So, also, is a nearer object, be¬ 
cause the more diverging lines drawn from it through the 
nodal points lie outside of the fovea in each eye. Most 
people go through life unobservant of this fact; we only pay 
attention to what we are looking at, and nearly always this 
makes its images on the two foveae. That the fact is as 
above stated may, however, be readily observed. Hold one 
finger a short way from the face and the other a little farther 
off; looking at one, observe the other without moving the 
eyes; it will be seen double. For every given position of the 
eyes there is a surface in space, all objects on which produce 
images on corresponding points of the two retinas: this sur 
face is called the horopter for that position of the eyes: all 
objects in it are seen single; all others in the visual field, 
double. 

The Perception of Solidity. When a solid object is 


THE EYE AS A SENSORY APPARATUS. 


555 


looked at the two retinal images are different. If a truncated 
pyramid be held in front of one eye its image will be that 
represented at P, Fig. 161 . If, however, it be held midway 



Fig. 161 . 


between the eyes, and looked at with both, then the left-eye 
image will be that in the middle of the figure, and the right- 
eye image that to the right. The small surface, bdca, in 
one answers to the large surface, V d f c' a ', in the other. 
This may be readily observed by holding a small cube in 
front of the nose and alternately looking at it with each eye. 
In such cases, then, the retinal images do not correspond, 
and yet we combine them in consciousness so as to see one 
solid object. This is known as stereoscopic vision , and the 
illusion of the common stereoscope depends on it. Two 
photographs are taken of the same object from two different 
points of view, one as it appears when seen from the left, and 
the other when seen from the right. These are then mounted 
for the stereoscope so that each is looked at by its proper eye, 
and the object appears in distinct relief, as if, instead of flat 
pictures, solid objects, occupying three dimensions of space, 
were looked at. Of course in many stereoscopic views the dis¬ 
tribution of light and shade, etc., assist, but these are quite 
unessential, as may be readily observed by copying the draw¬ 
ings of Fig. 161 and mounting them on a card the size of a 
stereoscopic slide, and placing it in the instrument. A solid 
pyramid standing out into space will be distinctly perceived; 
if the pictures be reversed the pyramid appears hollow. The 
pictures must not be too different, or their combination to give 
the idea of a single solid body will not take place. Many 
persons, indeed, fail entirely to get the illusion with ordinary 
stereoscopic slides. The phenomena of stereoscopic vision 
militate strongly against the view that there are any anatom¬ 
ically prearranged corresponding points in the two retinas. 

The Perception of Shine. When we look at a rippled 























556 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


lake in the moonlight, we get the perception of a “ shiny ” or 
brilliant surface. The moonlight is reflected from the waves 
to the eyes in a number of bright points: these are not ex¬ 
actly the same for both eyes, since the lines of light-reflection 
from the surface of the water to each are different. The 
perception of brilliancy seems largely to depend on this 
slight non-agreement of the light and dark points on the two 
retinas. A rapid change of luminous points, to and fro be¬ 
tween neighboring points on one retina, seems also to pro¬ 
duce it. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE EAR AND HEARING. 


The External Ear. The auditory organ in man consists 
of three portions, known respectively as the external ear, the 
mitt die ear or tympanum, and the internal ear or labyrinthX 
the latter contains the end organs of the auditory nerve. 
The external ear consists of the expansion seen on the ex¬ 
terior of the head, called the concha, M, Fig. 162, and a pas¬ 
sage leading in from it, the external auditory meatus , G . 



Fig. 162.—Semidiagrammatic section through the right ear (Czermak). M, 
concha; Q, external auditory meatus; T, tympanic membrane ; P, tympanic 
cavity ; o, oval foramen ; r, round foramen ; R, pharyngeal opening of Eusta¬ 
chian tube ; V , vestibule ; B,cl semicircular canal ; S, the cochlea ; Vt , scala ves- 
tibuli; Pt , scala tympani ; A, auditory nerve. 


This passage is closed at its inner end by the tympanic or 
drum membrane, T. It is lined by skin, through which 
numerous small glands, secreting the wax of the ear, open. 

The Tympanum ( P , Fig. 162) is an irregular cavity in 
the temporal bone, closed externally by the drum membrane. 

557 









558 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


From its inner side the Eustachian tube ( R ) proceeds to the 
pharynx, and the mucous membrane of that cavity is con¬ 
tinued up the tube to line the tympanum; the proper tym¬ 
panic membrane composed of connective tissue is therefore 
covered by mucous membrane on its inner, as it is by very 
thin skin on its outer, side. In the bony inner wall of the 
tympanum are two small apertures, the oval and round fora¬ 
mens, o and r, which lead into the labyrinth. During life the 
round aperture is closed by the lining mucous membrane, and 
the oval in another way, to be described presently. The tym¬ 
panic membrane, T, stretched across the outer side of the 
tympanum, forms a shallow funnel with its concavity out¬ 
wards. It is pressed by the external air on its exterior, and 
by air entering the tympanic cavity through the Eustachian 
tube on its inner side. If the tympanum were closed the 
pressures on the inner and outer sides of the drum membrane 
would not be always equal when barometric pressure varied, 
and the membrane would be bulged in or out according as 
the external or internal pressure on it were the greater. On 
the other hand, were the Eustachian tube always open the 
sounds of our own voices would be loud and disconcerting, so 
it is usually closed; but every time we swallow it is opened, 
and thus the air-pressure in the cavity is kept equal to that 
in the external auditory meatus. By holding the nose, keep¬ 
ing the mouth shut, and forcibly expiring, air may be forced 
under pressure into the tympanum, and will be held in part 
imprisoned there until the next act of swallowing. On 
making a balloon ascent or going rapidly down a deep mine, 
the sudden and great change of aerial pressure outside fre¬ 
quently causes painful tension of the drum membrane, which 
may be greatly alleviated by frequent swallowing movements. 

The Auditory Ossicles. Three small bones lie in the 
tympanum forming a chain from the drum membrane to the 
oval foramen. The external bone (Fig. 163 ) is the malleus 
or hammer; the middle one, the incus or anvil; and the 
internal, the stapes or stirrup. The malleus, M, has an 
upper enlargement or head, which carries on its inner 
side an articular surface for the incus; below the head is 
a constriction, the neck, and below this two processes com¬ 
plete the bone; one, the long or slender process, is im¬ 
bedded in a ligament which reaches from it to the front 
wall of the tympanum; the other process, the handle , 


THE EAR AND HEARING. 


559 


membrane lining the 



reaches down between the mucous 
inside of the drum membrane 
and the membrane proper, 
and is firmly attached to the 
latter near its centre and keeps 
the membrane draggedin there 
so as to give it its peculiar 
concave form, as seen from 
the outside. The incus has a 
body and two processes, and is 
much like a molar tooth with 
two fangs. On its body is an 
articular hollow to receive the Mm 

head of the malleus; its short Fig i 63 ._ T h e auditory ossicles of the 
process (Jb) is attached byliga- 

ment to the back wall of the the malleus; Me, neck of ditto ; long 

process ; Mm, handle; Je, body, Jb, short, 

tympanum; the long process and lon g process of incus; jpi, os 

. ti\ • t , , . °, x , orbiculare; Sep, head of stapes. 

(Jl) is directed inwards to the 

stapes; on the tip of this process is a little knob, which rep¬ 
resents a bone (os orbiculare) distinct in early life. The 
stapes (S) is extremely like a stirrup, and its base (the foot- 
piece of the stirrup) fits into the oval foramen, to the margin 
of which its edge is united by a fibrous membrane, allowing 
of a little play in and out. 

From the posterior side of the neck of the malleus a liga¬ 
ment passes to the back wall of the tympanum: this, with 
the ligament imbedding the slender process and fixed to the 
front wall of the tympanum, forms an antero-posterior axial 
ligament , on which the malleus can slightly rotate, so that the 
handle can be pushed in and the head out and vice versa. 
If a pin be driven through Fig. 163 just below the neck of 
the malleus and perpendicular to the paper it will very fairly 
represent this axis of rotation. Connected with the malleus 
is a tiny muscle, called the tensor tympani; it is inserted on 
the handle of the bone below the axis of rotation, and when 
it contracts pulls the handle in and tightens the drum mem¬ 
brane. Another muscle (the stapedius) is inserted into the 
outer end of the stapes, and when it contracts fixes the bone 
so as to limit its range of movement in and out of the fenestra 
ovalis. 

The Internal Ear. The labyrinth consists primarily of 
chambers and tubes hollowed out in the temporal bone and 



560 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


inclosed by,it on all sides, except for the oval and round 
foramens on its exterior, and certain apertures on its inner 
side by which blood-vessels and branches of the auditory 
nerve enter; during life all these are closed water-tight in one 
way or another. Lying in the bony labyrinth thus consti- 



Fia. 164.—Casts of the bony labyrinth. A, left labyrinth seen from the outer 
side ; B , right labyrinth from the inner side ; C, left labyrinth from above ; Fc, 
round foramen ; Fv. oval foramen ; h, horizontal semicircular canal ; ha, its 
ampulla ; vaa, ampulla of anterior vertical semicircular canal; vpa, ampulla of 
posterior vertical semicircular canal; vc, conjoined portion of the two vertical 
canals. 

tuted, are membranous parts, of the same general form but 
smaller, so that between the two a space is left; this is filled 
with a watery fluid, called the perilymph; and the mem¬ 
branous internal ear is filled by a similar liquid, the endo- 
lymph. 

The Bony Labyrinth. The bony labyrinth is described 
in three portions, the vestibule , the semicircular canals , and 
the cochlea ; casts of its interior are represented from differ¬ 
ent aspects in Fig. 164. The vestibule is the central part 
and has on its exterior the oval foramen (Fv) into which the 
base of the stirrup-bone fits. Behind the vestibule are three 
bony semicircular canals, communicating with the back of 
the vestibule at each end, and dilated near one end to form 
an ampulla (vpa, vaa, and ha). The horizontal canal lies in 
the plane which its name implies, and has its ampulla at the 
front end. The two other canals lie vertically, the anterior 
at right angles, and the posterior parallel, to the median 
antero-posterior vertical plane of the head. Their ampullary 
ends are turned forwards and open close together into the 
vestibule; their posterior ends unite (vc) and have a common 
vestibular opening. 

The bony cochlea is a tube coiled on itself somewhat like 
a snaiFs shell, and lying in front of the vestibule. 


THE EAR AND HEARING. 


561 


The Membranous Labyrinth. The membranous vesti¬ 
bule, lying in the bony, consists of two sacs communicating 
by a narrow aperture. The posterior is called the utriculus, 
and into it the membran¬ 
ous semicircular canals 
open. The anterior, called 
the sacculus, communi¬ 
cates by a tube with the 
membranous cochlea. The 
membranous semicircular 
canals much resemble the 
bony, and each has an 
ampulla; in most of their 
extent they are only united 
by a few irregular connec- Fig 165.—A section through the cochlea 
tive-tissue bands with the 

periosteum lining the bony canals; but in the ampulla one 
side of the membranous tube is closely adherent to its bony 
protector; at this point nerves enter the former. The rela¬ 
tions of the membranous to the bony cochlea are more com¬ 
plicated. A section through this part of the auditory appa¬ 
ratus (Fig. 165) shows that its osseous portion consists of a 
tube wound two and a half times (from left to right in the 
right ear and vice versa) around a central bony axis, the 
modiolus. From the axis a shelf, the lamina spiralis , pro¬ 
jects and partially subdivides the tube, extending farthest 
across in its lower coils. Attached to the outer edge of this 
bony plate is the membranous cochlea ( scala media), a tube 
triangular in cross-section and attached by its base to the 
outer side of the bony cochlear spiral. The spiral lamina 
and the membranous cochlea thus subdivide the cavity of the 
bony tube (Fig. 166) into an upper portion, the scala vesti- 
buli , SV, and a lower, the scala tympani, ST. Between these 
lie the lamina spiralis (£so) and the membranous cochlea (CO), 
the latter being bounded above by the membrane of Reissner 
(R) and below by the basilar membrane (6). The free edge 
of the lamina spiralis is thickened and covered with con¬ 
nective tissue which is hollowed out so as to form a spiral 
groove (the sulcus spiralis , ss) along the whole length of the 
membranous cochlea. The latter does not extend to the tip 
of the bony cochlea; above its apex the scala vestibuli and 
scala tympani join; both are filled with perilymph, and the 




562 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


former communicates below with the perilymph cavity of the 
vestibule, while the scala tympani abuts below on the round 
foramen, which, as has already been pointed out, is closed by 
a membrane. The membranous cochlea contains certain 



Fig. 166.—Section of one coil of the cochlea, magnified, £F, scala vestibuli ; 
R , membrane of Reissner; CC , membranous cochlea ( scala media)-, lls, limbus 
laminae, spiralis; t, tectorial membrane; ST, scala tympani; also, spiral lamina ; 
Co, rods of Corti; b, basilar membrane. 

solid structures seated on the basilar membrane and forming 
the organ of Corti; the rest of its cavity is filled with endo- 
lymph, which has free passage to that in the sacculus. 

The Organ of Corti. This contains the end organs of 
the cochlear nerves. Lining the sulcus spiralis are cuboidal 
cells; on the inner margin of the basilar membrane the cells 
become columnar, and then are succeeded by a row which bear 
on their upper ends a set of short stiff hairs, and constitute 
A B 



1 


1 •. F l°u 67 V~ The rods of Corti - A a pair of rods separated from the rest; B, a 
bitol the basnar membrane with several rods on it, showing how they cover in 
the tunnel of Corti; i, inner, and e, outer rods ; b, basilar membrane ; r, reticular 
membrane. 

the inner hair-cells, which are fixed below by a narrow apex 
to the basilar membrane ; nerve-fibres enter them. To the 
inner hair-cells succeed the rods of Corti (Co, Fig. 166 ), 
which are represented much magnified in Fig. 167 . These 
rods are stiff and arranged side by side in two rows, leaned 









THE EAR AND HEARING. 


563 


against one another by their upper ends so as to cover in a 
tunnel; they are known respectively as the inner and outer 
rods, the former being nearer the lamina spiralis . Each 
has a somewhat dilated base, firmly fixed to the basilar mem¬ 
brane; an expanded head where it meets its fellow (the inner 
rod presenting there a concavity into which the rounded 
head of the outer fits); and a slender shaft uniting the two, 
slightly curved like an italic /. The inner rods are more 
slender and more numerous than the outer, the numbers 
being about 6000 and 4500 respectively. Attached to the 
external sides of the head of the outer rods is the reticular 
membrane (r, Fig. 167), which is stiff and perforated by 
holes. External to the outer rods come four rows of outer 
hair-cells , connected like the inner row with nerve-fibres; 
their bristles project into the holes of the reticular mem¬ 
brane. Beyond the outer hair-cells is ordinary columnar 
epithelium, which passes gradually into cuboidal cells lining 
most of the membranous cochlea. The upper lip of the 
sulcus spiralis is uncovered by epithelium, and is known as 
the limbus laminae spiralis; from it projects the tectorial 
membrane (t, Fig. 166) which extends over the rods of Corti 
and the hair-cells. 

Nerve-Endings in the Semicircular Canals and the 
Vestibule. Medullated fibres (/, Fig. 168) from the vestib¬ 
ular branch of the auditory nerve are distributed along a line 
across the ampulla of each 
semicircular canal. They lose 
their medullary sheath close 
to the basement membrane, 

■a, which the axis cylinders 
pierce. The axis cylinders 
branch among the epithelium 
cells, which at this place are 
several rows thick, but have 
not yet been traced into direct 
continuity with any of them. 

The cells of the epithelium 
are of two varieties. The 
columnar cells or hair cells , c, 
do not reach the basement of ampulla of a semicir- 

membrane, are nucleated or 

slightly granular: from the free end of each projects a rigid 









564 


THE HUMAN BODY ,. 


hair process, d. The remaining cells, rod cells, b, are in 
several rows: each has a slender inner process extending to 
the basement membrane and an outer which reaches to the 
bases of the columnar cells and appears there to end in a 
rigid membrane, e , which is perforated for the passage of the 
hairs. They probably are mere supporting structures an¬ 
swering somewhat to the fibres of Muller of the retina. 
After death the hairs tend to break up into a bunch of fila¬ 
ments, and they are found imbedded in a sticky mucus-like 
material, which is probably a post-mortem product: it has 
been named the cupula terminalis. In some parts of the 
utricle and saccule is a region of epithelium very similar to 
that above described, and also supplied with nerve-fibres. In 
connection with them are found minute calcareous particles, 
—otoliths or ear-stones. 

The Loudness, Pitch, and Timbre of Sounds. Sounds, 
as sensations, fall into two groups— notes and noises. Physi¬ 
cally, sounds consist of vibrations, and these, under most 
circumstances, when they first reach our auditory organs, are 
alternating rarefactions and condensations of the air, or 
aerial waves. When the waves follow one another uni¬ 
formly, or periodically , the resulting sensation (if any) is a 
note; when the vibrations are aperiodic it is a noise. In 
notes we recognize (1) loudness or intensity; (2) pitch; (3) 
quality or timbre , or, as it has been called, tone color ; a note 
of a given loudness and pitch produced by a flute and by a 
violin has a different character or individuality in each case; 
this quality is its timbre. Before understanding the work¬ 
ing of the auditory mechanism we must get some idea of the 
physical qualities in objective sound of which the subjective 
differences of auditory sensations are signs. 

The loudness of a sound depends on the force of the aerial 
waves; the greater the intensity of the alternating condensa¬ 
tions and rarefactions of these in the external auditory 
meatus, the louder the sound. The pitch of a note depends 
on the length of the waves, that is the distance from one 
point of greatest condensation to the next, or (what amounts 
to the same thing) on the number of waves reaching the ear 
in given time, say a second. The shorter the waves the 
more rapidly they follow one another, and the higher the 
pitch of the note. When audible vibrations bear the ratio 
1:2 to one another, we hear the musical interval called an 


THE EAR AND HEARING. 


565 


octave. The note c on the unaccented octave is due to 132 
vibrations in a second. The note o', the next higher octave 
of this, is produced by 264 vibrations in a second; the next 
lower octave (great octave, C), by 66; and so on. Sound 
vibrations may be too rapid or too slow in succession to pro¬ 
duce sonorous sensations, just as the ultra-violet and ultra- 
red rays of the solar spectrum fail to excite the retina. The 
highest-pitched audible note answers to about 38,016 vibra¬ 
tions in a second, but it differs in individuals; many persons 
cannot hear the cry of a bat nor the chirp of a cricket, which 
lie near this upper audible limit. On the other hand, sounds 
of vibrational rate about 40 per second are not well heard, 
and a little below this become inaudible. The highest note 
used in orchestras is the d v of the fifth accented octave, pro¬ 
duced by the piccolo flute, due to 4752 vibrations in a second; 
and the lowest-pitched is the E v of the contra octave, pro¬ 
duced by the double bass. Modern grand pianos and organs 
go down to C, in the contra octave (33 vibrations per second) 
or even A ", (27^), but the musical quality of such notes is 
imperfect; they produce rather a “hum" than a true tone 
sensation, and are only used along with notes of higher 
octaves to which they give a character of greater depth. 

Pendular Vibrations. Since the loudness of a tone de¬ 
pends on the vibrational amplitude of its physical antece¬ 
dent, and its pitch on the vibrational rate, we have still to 
seek the cause of timbre; the quality by which we recognize 
the human voice, the violin, the piano, and the flute, even 
when all sound the same note and of the same loudness. 
The only quality of periodic vibrations left to account for 
this, is what we may call wave-form. Think of the movement 
of a pendulum; starting slowly from its highest point, it 
sweeps faster and faster to its lowest, and then slower and 
slower to its highest point on the opposite side; and then 
repeats the movements in the reverse direction. Graphically 
we may represent such vibrations by the outer continuous 
curved line in Fig. 169. Suppose the lower end of the pen¬ 
dulum to bear a writing point which marked on a sheet of 
paper travelling down uniformly behind it, and at such a r&te 
as to travel the distance 0-1 in two seconds. If the pendu¬ 
lum were at rest the straight vertical line would be drawn. 
But if the pendulum were swinging we would get a curved 
line, compounded of the vertical movement of the paper and 


566 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the to-and-fro movement of the pendulum, writing sometimes 
on one side of the line 0-1-2 and sometimes on the other. 
Starting at a moment when the pendulum crosses the middle, 
0, we would get described the curve 0, a x a % a % , at first sepa¬ 
rating fast from the vertical line, then slower, then return¬ 
ing, at first gradually, then faster, until it crossed the vertical 
again at the end of a second, and commenced a similar ex¬ 
cursion on its other side, at the end of which it would be 
back at 1, and in just the same position, and ready to repeat 
exactly the swing, with which we commenced. A pendulum 
thus executes similar movements in equal 
periods of time, or its vibrations are periodic . 
A full swing on each side of the position of 
rest constitutes a complete vibration, so the 
vibrational period of a seconds pendulum is 
two seconds: at the end of that time it is 
precisely where it was two seconds before, 
and moving in the same direction and at the 
same rate. It is clear that by examining 
such a curve we could tell exactly how the 
pendulum moved, and also in what period, if 
we knew the rate at which the paper on 
which its point wrote was moving. The 
vertical line 0-1-2 is called the abscissa; 
perpendiculars drawn from it and meeting 
the curve are ordinates: equal lengths on 
the abscissa represent equal times; where an 
ordinate from a given point of the abscissa 
meets the curve, there the writing point was 
at that moment; where successive ordinates 
increase or decrease rapidly the pendulum 
moved fast from or towards its position of 
rest, and vice versa. Similarly, any other 
periodic movement may be perfectly repre¬ 
sented by curves; and since the form of the 
curve tells us all about the movement, it is 
common to speak of the “ form of a vibration,” meaning the 
form of the curve which indicates its characters. Periodic 
vibrations (Fig. 169), whose ordinates at first grow fast, then 
more slowly, next diminish slowly and then faster, and 
represented by a symmetrical curve on one side the abscissa, 







THE EAR AND HEARING. 


567 


which is repeated exactly on the other side of the abscissa, 
are known as pendular vibrations. 

The Composition of Vibrations. The vibrations of a 
seconds pendulum set the air-particles in contact with it in 
similar movement, but the aerial waves succeed one another 
too slowly to produce in us the sensation of a musical note. 
If, for the pendulum, we substitute a tuning-fork (the prongs 
of which move in a like way), and the fork vibrates 132 times 
per 1 , then 132 aerial waves will fall on the tympanic mem¬ 
brane in that time, and we w r ill hear the note c of the unac¬ 
cented octave. If the larger continuous curve in Fig. 169 
represent the aerial vibrations in this case, the distance 0 to 
1 on the abscissa will represent of a second. Let, simul¬ 
taneously, the air be set in movement by a fork of the next 
higher octave, c\ making 264 vibrations per 1"; under the 
influence of this second fork alone, the aerial particles would 
move as represented by the line 0, l\ and so on, the 
waves being half as long and cutting the abscissa twice as 
often. But when both forks act together the aerial move¬ 
ment will be the algebraic sum of the movements due to 
each fork; when both drive the air one way they will rein¬ 
force one another, and vice versa; the result will be the 
movement represented by the dotted line, which is still 
periodic, repeating itself at equal intervals of time, but no 
longer 'pendular , since it is not alike on the ascending and 
descending limbs of the curves. We thus get at the fact 
that non-pendular vibrations may be produced by the fu¬ 
sion of pendular, or, in technical phrase, by their compo¬ 
sition. 

Suppose several musical instruments, as those of an or¬ 
chestra, to be sounded together. Each produces its own 
effect on the air-particles, whose movements, being the alge¬ 
braical sum of those due to all, must at any given instant be 
very complex; yet the ear can pick out at will and follow the 
tones of any one instrument. From the complex aerial 
movement it can select that fraction of it which one vibrat¬ 
ing body produces. The air in the external auditory meatus 
at any given moment can only be in one state of rarefaction 
or condensation and at one rate and in one direction of move¬ 
ment, this being the resultant of all the forces acting upon 
it; all clashing, and some pushing one way and others an¬ 
other. If the resultant movement be not periodic it will be 


568 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


recognized as due to noises or to several simultaneous in¬ 
harmonic musical tones; this is commonly the case when 
musical tones are not united designedly, and the ear thus 
gets one criterion for distinguishing movements of the air 
due to several simultaneous musical tones. However, a com¬ 
posite set of tones will give rise to periodic vibrations when 
all are due to vibrations of rates which are multiples of the 
same whole number. In such cases the movement of the 
air in the auditory meatus has no property except vibrational 
form by which the ear could distinguish it from a simple 
tone; when the two tuning-forks giving the forms of vibra¬ 
tion (with rates as 1 to 2), represented in Fig. 169 by con¬ 
tinuous lines, are sounded together, we get the new form of 
vibration represented by the dotted line, and this has the 
same period as that of the lower-pitched fork; yet the ear 
can clearly distinguish the resultant sound from that of this 
fork alone, as a note of the same pitch but of different 
timbre; and with practice can recognize exactly what simple 
vibrations go to make it up. 

The Analysis of Non-Pendular Vibrations. If a per¬ 
son with a trained ear listens attentively to any ordinary 
musical tone, such as that of a piano, he hears, not only the 
note whose vibrational rate determines the pitch of the tone 
as a whole, but a whole series of higher notes, in harmony 
with the general or fundamental tone; this latter is the 
'primary partial tone , and the others are secondary partial 
tones; nearly all tones used in music contain both. If the 
prime tone be due to 132 vibrations a second (c), its first 
upper partial is c' ( = 264 vibrations per second); the next is 
the fifth of this octave ( g ' = 396 = 132 X 3 vibrations per 1'); 
the next is the second octave, c" (132x4 = 528 vibrations per 
1'); the next is the major third of the c" (= 132 X 5 = 660 
vibrations per second = e"), and so on. The only form of 
vibration which gives no upper partial tones is the pendular; 
we may call notes due to such vibrations simple tones; and 
we, consequently, recognize in music tones which are simple 
(such as those of tuning-forks) and those which are com¬ 
pound ; these latter are non-pendular in form. 

We find, then, that the form of aerial vibrations deter¬ 
mines in our sensations the occurrence or non-occurrence of 
upper partial tones. It also, as we have seen, determines the 
quality or timbre of the tone, since vibrational amplitude and 


THE EAR AND HEARING. 569 

rate are otherwise accounted for in sensation by loudness 
• and pitch. 

It can be proved, by the employment of the higher mathe¬ 
matics, that every periodic non-pendular movement can be 
analyzed (as the dotted curve of Fig. 169 may be) into a 
given number of pendular vibrations, that is,.every compound 
vibration into a set of simple ones; and that every periodic 
non-pendular vibration can be made by the combination of 
pendular. Moreover, any given compound vibration can be 
analyzed into but one set of simple ones; no other combina¬ 
tion will produce it. Consequently a vibrational movement 
of the air in the external auditory passage, producing a com¬ 
pound musical tone sensation, can be exhibited in every case, 
but only in one way, as the sum of a number of simple vibra¬ 
tions, whose rates are multiples of that which determines the 
pitch of the tone. 

Now when the trained ear listens to a tone with the ob¬ 
ject of detecting upper partials if present, it hears them only 
when the vibrations producing the tone are non-pendular, 
i.e. when upper partials, theoretically, might be expected; 
and those heard are exactly those demanded by theory; by 
the help of instruments their detection is made easy even to 
untrained ears. In ordinary circumstances we do not heed 
secondary partial tones; we hear a note of the pitch of the 
primary partial and of a certain timbre; and whenever the 
upper partials present are different, or of different relative 
intensities, the timbre of the note varies. Hence it becomes 
probable that, just as the ear can at will follow any instru¬ 
ment in an orchestra, analyzing the aerial movement so as to 
select and follow the fraction of the whole due to that one, 
so it can and does analyze compound tones when proceeding 
from one instrument, and that the upper partials, not rising 
into consciousness as definite tones, but present as subdued 
sensations, give its character to the whole tone and determine 
its timbre. It might be, however, that the composition of 
non-pendular vibrations from pendular was a mere mathe¬ 
matical possibility, having no real existence in nature. Be¬ 
fore we can accept the above explanation of timbre, we must 
see if there is any evidence that, as a matter of fact, non- 
pendular vibrations, not only may be, but are , made up by 
the combination of pendular. 

Sympathetic Resonance. Imagine slight taps to be 


570 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


given to a pendulum ; if these be repeated at such intervals 
of time as to always help the swing and never to retard it, 
the pendulum will soon be set in powerful movement. If 
the taps are irregular, or when regular come at such inter¬ 
vals as sometimes to promote and sometimes retard the move¬ 
ment, no great swing will be produced; but if they always 
push the pendulum in the way it is going at that instant, 
they need not come every swing in order to set up a powerful 
vibration; once in two, three, or four swings will do. A 
stretched string, such as that of a piano, is so far like a 
pendulum that it tends to vibrate at one rate and no other; 
if aerial waves hit it at exactly the right times they soon set 
it in sufficiently powerful vibrations to cause it to emit an 
audible note. By using such strings we might hope to de¬ 
tect the separate pendular vibrations in any non-pendular 
aerial periodic movement if such really existed; certain 
strings would pick out the pendular component agreeing 
in rate with their own vibrational period and be soon set 
in powerful movement; while those not vibrating in the 
same period as any of the pendular components, would 
remain practically at rest, like the pendulum getting taps 
which sometimes helped and sometimes impeded its swing. 
If the dampers of a piano be raised and a note be sung 
loudly to it, it will be found that several strings are set 
in vibration, such vibrations being called sympathetic. The 
human voice emits compound tones which can be mathe¬ 
matically analyzed into simple vibrations, and if the piano 
strings set in movement by it be examined, they will be 
found to be exactly those which answer to these pendular 
vibrations and to no others. We thus get experimental 
grounds for believing that compound tones are really made 
up of a number of simple vibrations, and get an additional 
justification for the supposition that in the ear each note is 
analyzed into its pendular components; and that the differ¬ 
ence of sensation which we call timbre is due to the effect of 
the secondary partial tones thus perceived. If so, the ear 
must have in it an apparatus adapted for sympathetic reso¬ 
nance. 

It may be asked why, if the ear analyzes vibrations in 
this way, do we not commonly perceive it ? How is it that 
what we ordinarily hear is the timbre of a given tone and not 


THE EAR AND HEARING. 


571 


the separate upper partials which give it this character? 
The explanation is more psychological than physiological, and 
belongs to the same category as the reason why we do not 
ordinarily notice the blind spot in the eye, or the doubleness 
of objects out of the horopter, or the duplicity of stereoscopic 
images. We only use our senses in daily life when they can 
tell us something that may be useful to us, and we neglect so 
habitually all sensations which would be useless or confusing, 
that at last it needs special attention to observe them at all. 
The way in which tones are combined to give timbre to a 
note is a matter of no importance in the daily use of them, 
and so we fail entirely to observe the components and note 
only the resultant, until we make a careful and scientific 
examination of our sensations. 

The Functions of the Tympanic Membrane. If a 
stretched membrane, such as a drum-head, be struck, it will 
be thrown into periodic vibration and emit for a time a note 
of a determined pitch. The smaller the membrane and the 
tighter it is stretched the higher the pitch of its note; every 
stretched membrane thus has a rate of its own at which it 
tends to vibrate, just as a piano or violin string has. When 
a note is sounded in the air near such a membrane, the alter¬ 
nating waves of aerial condensation and rarefaction will 
move it; and if the waves succeed at the vibrational rate of 
the membrane the latter will be set in powerful sympathetic 
vibration; if they do not push the membrane at the proper 
times, their effects will neutralize one another: hence such 
membranes respond well to only one note. The tympanic 
membrane, however, responds equally well to a large number 
of notes; at the least for those due to aerial vibrations of rates 
from 60 to 4000 per second, running over eight octaves and 
constituting those commonly used in music. This faculty 
depends on two things: (1) the membrane is comparatively 
loosely and not uniformly stretched; (2) it is loaded by the 
tympanic bones. 

The drum-membrane is a shallow funnel with its sides con¬ 
vex towards the external auditory meatus; something like an 
umbrella turned inside out; in such a membrane the tension is 
not uniform but increases towards the centre, and it has accord¬ 
ingly no proper note of its own. Further, whatever tendency 
such a membrane may have to vibrate rather at one rate than 


572 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


another, is almost completely removed by “ damping ” it; i.e. 
placing in contact with it something comparatively heavy and 
which has to be moved when the membrane vibrates. This 
is effected by the tympanic bones, fixed to the drum-membrane 
by the handle of the malleus. Another advantage is gained 
by the damping; once a stretched membrane is set vibrating it 
continues so doing for some time; but if loaded its movements 
cease almost as soon as the moving impulses. The dampers 
of a piano are for this purpose; and violin-players have to 
‘‘damp” with the fingers the strings they have used when 
they wish the note to cease. The tympanic bones act as 
dampers. 

Functions of the Auditory Ossicles. When the air in 
the external auditory meatus is condensed it pushes in the 
handle of the malleus. This bone then slightly rotates on 
the axial ligament and, locking into the incus where the 
two hopes articulate, causes the long process ( Jl , Fig. 163) 
of the latter to move inwards. The incus thus pushes-in the 
stapes; the reverse occurs when air in the auditory passage is 
rarefied. Aerial vibrations thus set the chain of bones swing¬ 
ing, and push in and pull out the base of the stapes, which 
sets up waves in the perilymph of the labyrinth, and these 
are transmitted through the membranous labyrinth to the 
endolymph. These liquids being chiefly water, and practi¬ 
cally incompressible, the end of the stapes could not work in 
and out at the oval foramen, were the labyrinth elsewhere 
completely surrounded by bone: but the membrane covering 
the round foramen bulges out when the base of the stapes is 
pushed in, and vice versa; and so allows of waves being set 
up in the labyrinthic liquids. These correspond in period 
and form to those in the auditory meatus; their amplitude is 
determined by the extent of the vibrations of the drum mem¬ 
brane. 

The form of the tympanic membrane causes it to transmit 
to its centre, where the malleus is attached, vibrations of its 
lateral parts in diminished amplitude but increased power; so 
that the tympanic bones are pushed only a little way but with 
considerable force. Its area, too, is about twenty times as 
great as that of the oval foramen, so that force collected on 
the large area is, by pushing the tympanic bones, all concen¬ 
trated on the smaller. The ossicles also form a bent lever 
(Fig. 163) of which the fulcrum is at the axial ligament and 


THE EAR AND HEARING. 


573 


the effective outer arm of this lever is about half as long again 
as the inner, and so the movements transmitted by the drum- 
membrane to the handle of the malleus are communicated 
with diminished range, but increased power, to the base of 
the stapes. 

Ordinarily, sound-waves reach the labyrinth through the 
tympanum, but they may also be transmitted through the 
bones of the head; if the handle of a vibrating tuning-fork 
be placed on the vertex, the sounds heard by the person ex¬ 
perimented upon seem to have their origin inside his own 
cranium. Similarly, when a vibrating body is held between 
the teeth, sound reaches the end organs of the auditory nerve 
through the skull-bones; and persons who are deaf from dis¬ 
ease or injury of the tympanum can thus be made to hear, as 
with the audiphone. Of course if deafness be due to disease 
of the proper nervous auditory apparatus no device can make 
the person hear. 

Function of the Cochlea. We have already seen reason 
to believe that in the ear there is an apparatus adapted for 
sympathetic resonance, by which we recognize different musi¬ 
cal tone-colors; the minute structure of the membranous 
cochlea is such as to lead us to look for it there. An old view 
was that the rods of Corti, which vary in length, were like so 
many piano-strings, each tending to vibrate at a given rate 
and picking out and responding to pendular aerial vibrations 
of its own period, and exciting a nerve which gave rise to a 
particular tone sensation. When the labyrinthic fluids were 
set in non-pendular vibrations, the rods of Corti were thought 
to analyze these into their pendular components, all rods of 
the vibrational rate of these being set in sympathetic move¬ 
ment, but that rod most whose period was that of the primary 
partial tone; this rod would determine the pitch of the note, 
and the less-marked sensation due to the others affected would 
give the timbre. The rods, however, do not differ in size 
sufficiently to account for the range of notes which we hear; 
they are absent in birds, which undoubtedly distinguish differ¬ 
ent musical notes; and the nerve-fibres of the cochlea are not 
connected with them but with the hair-cells. 

On the whole it seems probable that the basilar membrane 
is to be looked upon as the primary arrangement for sympa¬ 
thetic resonance in the ear. It increases in breadth twelve 
times from the base of the cochlea to its tip (the less width of 


574 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the lamina spiralis at the apex more than compensating for 
the less size of the bony tube there) and is stretched tight 
across, but loosely in the other direction. A membrane so 
stretched behaves as a set of separate strings placed side by 
side, somewhat as those of a harp but much closer together; 
and each string would vibrate at its own period without in¬ 
fluencing much those on each side of it. Probably, then, 
each transverse band vibrates to simple tones of its own 
period, and excites the hair-cells which lie on it, and through 
them the nerve-fibres. Perhaps the rods of Qorti, being stiff, 
and carrying the reticular membrane, rub that against the 
upper ends of the hair-cells which project into its apertures 
and so help in a subsiduary w r ay, each pair of rods being 
especially moved when the band of basilar membrane carrying 
it is set in vibration. The tectorial membrane is probably a 
“ damperit is soft and inelastic, and suppresses the vibra¬ 
tions as soon as the moving force ceases. 

Function of the Vestibule and Semicircular Canals. 
Many noises are merely spoiled music; they are due to tones so 
combined as not to give rise to periodic vibrations; these are 
probably heard by the cochlea. If a single violent air-wave 
ever cause a sound sensation (which is doubtful, since any vio¬ 
lent push of an elastic substance, such as the air, will cause it 
to make several rebounds before coming to rest) we perhaps 
hear it by the vestibule; the otoliths, there in contact with 
the auditory hairs, are imbedded in a tenacious gummy mass 
quite distinct from the proper endolymph, and are not 
adapted for executing regular vibrations, but they might 
yield to a single powerful impulse and transmit it to the hair- 
cells, and through them stimulate the nerves. There is reason 
to believe that the semicircular canals have nothing to do 
with hearing; their supposed function is described in Chapter 
XXXVI. 

Auditory Perceptions. Sounds, as a general rule, do not 
seem to us to originate within the auditory apparatus; we 
refer them to an external source, and to a certain extent can 
judge the distance and direction of this. As already men¬ 
tioned, the extrinsic reference of sounds which reach the laby¬ 
rinth through the general skull-bones instead of through the 
tympanic chain is imperfect or absent. The recognition of 
the distance of a sounding body is possible only when the 
sound is well known, and then not very accurately; from its 


THE EAR AND HEARING. 


575 


faintness or loudness we may make in some cases a pretty 
good guess. Judgments as to the direction of a sound are 
also liable to be grossly wrong, as most persons have experi¬ 
enced. However, when a sound is heard louder by the left 
than the right ear we can recognize that its source is on the 
left; when equally with both ears, that it is straight in front 
or behind; and so on. The concha has perhaps something to 
do with enabling us to detect whether a sound originates be¬ 
fore or behind the ear, since it collects, and turns with more 
intensity into the external auditory meatus, sound-waves 
coming from the front. By turning the head and noting 
the accompanying changes of sensation in each ear we can 
localize sounds better than if the head be kept motionless. 
The large movable concha of many animals, as a rabbit or a 
horse, which can he turned in several directions, is probably 
an important aid to them in detecting the position of the 
source of a sound. That the recognition of the direction of 
sounds is not a true sensation, but a- judgment, founded on 
experience, is illustrated by the fact that we can estimate 
much more accurately the direction of the human voice, 
which we hear and heed most, than that of any other sound. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


TOUCH. TEMPERATURE SENSATIONS. PAIN. COMMON 
SENSATIONS. SMELL. TASTE. THE MUSCULAR SENSE. 

The skin is very abundantly supplied with afferent nerve- 
fibres, and from it we get several very distinct kinds of sen¬ 
sations; it is therefore not surprising that nerve-fibres are 
found to end in it in different ways, but at present we are not 
able to associate satisfactorily any one particular variety of 
cutaneous nerve-ending with the origination of the impulses, 
which lead to the occurrence of any one kind of the skin sen¬ 
sations. 

Many cutaneous afferent nerve-fibres end in a very simple 
way: they form plexuses in the outermost layer of the dermis 
and then, losing the medullary sheath, the axis cylinders enter 
the epidermis and there break up into extremely minute fila¬ 
ments which ramify among the cells of the Malpighian layer 
and terminate there without any special end organs. Other 
fibres have special terminal apparatuses, known as (1) tactile 
cells; (2) end bulbs ; (3) tactile corpuscles ; (4) Pacinian 
bodies. 

The Tactile Cells lie usually in the deepest layer of the 
epidermis, but sometimes are found also in the dermis. They 
are larger and more granular than the neighboring epidermic 
cells, more oval, and stain more deeply with some reagents, 
especially gold chloride. Minute axis-cylinder branches can 
be traced into close relation to them, and according to some 
histologists end in flat expansions closely applied to the tactile 
cells, while others believe the nerve-filament to be directly 
continuous with the cell substance. These cells are especially 
abundant in the epidermis lining the root-sheaths of such 
tactile hairs as the “whiskers” of a cat, but they exist in 
many if not most regions of the human skin. 

The End Bulbs lie in the dermis of certain regions as the 
lips, but they are mainly confined to the conjunctiva and to 
the mucous membrane lining the mouth and that of the lowest 

576 


TO UGH. TEMPERA TUBE SENS A TIONS. 


577 


part of the rectum, all of which possess tactile sensibility. 
Very similar bodies are found in the synovial membranes of 
some joints. In man they are spheroidal and vary in diameter 
from .03 to 0.1 m.m. inch). Each has an external 

capsule of connective tissue within which is a core consisting 
of polygonal nucleated ill-defined cells. The nerve-fibre 
loses its medullary sheath close to the end bulb and the axis 
cylinder enters the core and there usually breaks up into fila¬ 
ments which ramify between the cells of the core and end in 
little knobs: sometimes the axis cylinder does not branch. 

The tactile corpuscles (Eig. 170) are found especially in the 



Fig. 170.—Section of skin showing two papillae of the dermis and some of the 
deeper cells of the epidermis ; a, papilla containing blood vessels; b , papilla con¬ 
taining a tactile corpuscle, t; d, meau llated nerve-fibres going to the corpuscle; 
at f , optical cross-sections of the fibres are s j en as they wind round the outside of 
the corpuscle; the general transverse direction of the connective-tissue bundles of 
the capsule of the corpuscle is shown. 

skin of the hands and feet, but also on the inner surface of 
the forearm, on the nipple, the lips, and mucous membrane 
of the tip of the tongue. They lie in dermic papillae and are 
oval in form, measuring about 0.8 m.m. (-^ inch) in the long 
and 0.3 m.m. ( ¥ J_ inch) in the transverse diameter. Each 
has an outer capsule of connective tissue from which many 
transverse or oblique dissepiments enter and divide the in¬ 
terior into many small chambers. Two or three medullated 
nerve-fibres go to each corpuscle, and after winding around it 
obliquely several times penetrate the capsule at various levels, 
at the same time becoming non-medullated. The axis cylin¬ 
ders run in the clefts between the connective-tissue dissepi¬ 
ments and after branching many times end in pear-shaped or 
spherical enlargements, which are always placed near the out¬ 
side of the corpuscle. 













































578 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The Pacinian Bodies or Corpuscles (Fig. 171) are found 
in large numbers in the subcutaneous areolar tissue of the hand 
and foot, and occasionally in other regions of the skin. But 
they are also found in internal parts, as on the nerves of 
tendons and ligaments and on some branches of the solar 
plexus; and they are very abundant and easily seen in the 
mesentery of the cat, so that though almost certainly organs 
in which a fferent nerve impulses originate, they are not organs 
of touch. The corpuscles are oval, often curved on the long 
axis, and from 1.5 to 2.5 m.m. ( t V _ tV i n ch) in length. 
When fresh they have a whitish translucent appearance and 
are somewhat more opaque in the centre. When magnified 
each Pacinian body is seen to consist of an almost structure¬ 
less core surrounded by many concentric capsules. ' Each 
capsule is a layer of imperfectly developed connective tissue 
having a few very fine fibres, the interstices between which 
are filled with liquid: each surface of each capsule is formed 
by a well-marked layer of flat nucleated cells, and the cell 
layer on the inner side of one capsule is separated from the 
layer on the outer side of the next by a narrow cleft, which 

is a lymph lacuna. The capsules 
are usually so closely applied to 
one another that the lymph spaces 
between them are almost oblit¬ 
erated. A medullated nerve- 
fibre runs to one pole of each Pa¬ 
cinian body and the axis cylinder 
and medullary sheath are contin¬ 
ued through the capsules to the 
core; the medullary sheath be¬ 
coming thinner on the way. The 
axis cylinder enters the core and 
runs to near its opposite end, 
where it ends in a rounded en¬ 
largement or sometimes divides 
into several short branches, each 
with a knobbed end. 

Touch, or the Pressure 
Sense. Through the skin we 
get several kinds of sensation; touch proper, heat and cold, 
and pain; and we can with more or less accuracy localize 
them on the surface of the Body. The interior of the mouth 



Fig. 171.—A Pacinian corpuscle, 
magnified. 



















TOUCH. TEMPERATURE SENSATIONS. 519 

possesses also these sensibilities. Through touch proper we 
recognize pressure or traction exerted on the skin, and the 
force of the pressure; the softness or hardness, roughness or 
smoothness, of the body producing it; and the form of this, 
when not too large to be felt all over. When to learn the form 
of an object we move the hand over it, muscular sensations 
are combined with proper tactile, and such a combination of 
the two sensations is frequent; moreover, we rarely touch 
anything without at the same time getting temperature sen¬ 
sations ; therefore pure tactile feelings are rare. 

From an evolution point of view, touch is probably the first 
distinctly differentiated sensation, and this primary position 
it still largely holds in our mental life; we mainly think of the 
things about us as objects which would give us certain tactile 
sensations if we were in contact with them. Though the eye 
tells us much quicker, and at a greater range, what are the 
shapes of objects and whether they are smooth, rough, and so 
on, our real conceptions of round and square and rough 
bodies are derived through touch, and we largely translate 
unconsciously the teachings of the eye into mental terms of 
the tactile sense. 

The delicacy of the pressure sense varies on different parts 
of the skin; it is greatest on the forehead, temples, and back 
of the forearm, where a weight of 2 milligr. (.03 grain) press¬ 
ing on an area of 9 sq. millim. (.0139 sq. inch) can be felt. 
On the front of the forearm 3 milligr. (.036 grain) can be 
similarly felt, and on the front of the forefinger 5 to 15 milligr. 
(.07-0.23 grain). 

In order that the sense of touch may be excited neighboring 
skin areas must be differently pressed; when we lay the hand 
on a table this is secured by the inequalities of the skin, which 
prevent end organs, lying near together, from being equally 
compressed. When, however, the hand is immersed in a 
liquid, as mercury, which fits into all its inequalities and 
presses with practically the same weight on all neighboring 
immersed areas, the sense of pressure is only felt at a line along 
the surface, where the immersed and non-immersed parts of 
the skin meet. 

It was in connection with the tactile sense that the facts on 
which so-called psycho-physical law (Chap. XXXI.) is based, 
were first observed. The smallest perceptible difference of 
pressure recognizable when touch alone is used, is about -J; 


080 


T1IE HUMAN BODY. 


i.e ., we can just tell a weight of 20 grams (310 grains) from 
one of 30 (465 grains) or of 40 grams (620 grains) from one 
of 60 (930 grains); the change which can just be recognized 
being thus the same fraction of that already acting as a stimu¬ 
lus. The ratio only holds good, however, for a certain mean 
range of pressures; it is not true for very small or very great 
pressures. The experimental difficulties in determining the 
question are considerable; muscular sensations must be rigidly 
excluded; the time elapsing between laying the different 
weights on the skin must always he equal; the same region 
and area of the skin must be used; the weights must have 
the same temperature; and fatigue of the organs must be 
eliminated. Considerable individual variations are also ob¬ 
served, the least perceptible difference not being the same in 
all persons. 

The Localizing Power of the Skin. When the eyes are 
closed and a point of the skin is touched we can with some 
accuracy indicate the region stimulated; although tactile 
feelings are in general characters alike, they differ in some¬ 
thing (local sign ) besides intensity by which we can distin¬ 
guish them; some sensation quality must be present enabling 
us to tell from one another two precisely similar contacts of 
an external object when applied, say, to the tips of the fore 
and ring fingers respectively. The accuracy of the localizing 
power is not nearly so great as in the retina and varies widely 
in different skin regions; it may be measured by observing 
the least distance which must separate two objects (as the 
blunted points of a pair of compasses) in order that they may 
be felt as two. The following table illustrates some of the 
differences observed—- 


Tongue-tip. 1.1mm. (.04 incli) 

Palm side of last phalanx of finger. 2.2 mm. (.08 inch) 

Red part of lips. 4.4 mm. (.16 inch) 

Tip of nose. 6.6 mm. (.24 inch) 

Back of second phalanx of finger.11.0 mm. (.44 inch) 

Heel. 22.0 mm. (.88 inch) 

Back of hand. 30.8 mm. (1.23 inches) 

Forearm. 39.6 mm. (1.58 inches) 

Sternum. 44.0 mm. (1.76 inches) 

Back of neck. 52.8 mm. (2.11 inches) 

Middle of back. 66.0 mm. (2.64 inches) 


The localizing power is a little more acute across the long 














TO UGH. TEMPERA TUBE SENS A TIONS. 


581 


axis of a limb, and is better when the pressure is only strong 
enough to just cause a distinct tactile 
sensation, than when it is more power¬ 
ful ; it is also very readily and rapidly 
improvable by practice. 

It might be thought that this local¬ 
izing power depended directly on nerve 
distribution; that each touch nerve had 
connection with a special brain-centre 
at one end (the excitation of which 
eaused a sensation with a chaiwi^ristic 
local sign), and at the other end was 
distributed over a certain skin area, and 
that the larger this area the farther 
. apart might two points be and still give 
rise to only one sensation. If this were so, however, the 
peripheral tactile areas (each being determined by the ana¬ 
tomical distribution of a nerve-fibre) must have definite un¬ 
changeable limits, which experiment shows that they do not 
possess. Suppose the small areas in Fig. 172 to each repre¬ 
sent a peripheral area of nerve distribution. If any two 
points in c were touched we would according to the theory 
get but a single sensation; but if, while the compass points 
remained the same distance apart, or were even approximated, 
one were placed in c and the other on a contiguous area, two 
fibres would be stimulated and we ought to get two sensa¬ 
tions; but such is not the case; on the same skin region the 
points must be always the same distance apart, no matter how 
they be shifted, in order to give rise to two just distinguish 
able sensations. 

It is probable that the nerve areas are much smaller than 
the tactile; and that several unstimulated must intervene be¬ 
tween the excited, in order to produce sensations which shall 
be distinct. If we suppose twelve unexcited nerve areas 
must intervene, then, in Fig. 172, a and b will be just on the 
limits of a single tactile area; and no matter how the points 
are moved, so long as eleven, or fewer, unexcited areas come 
between, we would get a single tactile sensation; in this way 
we can explain the fact that tactile areas have no fixed boun¬ 
daries in the skin, although the nerve distribution hi any part 
must be constant. We also see why the back of a knife laid 
on the surface causes a continuous linear sensation, although 



Fig. 172. 





582 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


it touches many distinct nerve areas; if we could discriminate 
the excitations of each of these from that of its immediate 
neighbors we would get the sensation of a series of points 
touching us, one for each nerve region excited; but in the 
absence of intervening unexcited nerve areas the sensations are 
fused together. 

The ultimate differentiation of tactile areas takes place in 
the central organs, as will be more fully pointed out in the 
next chapter. Afferent nerve impulses reaching the spinal 
cord from a finger-tip enter the gray matter and tend te 
spread or radiate in it; from the gray region through which 
they spread, impulses are sent on to perceptive tactile centres 
in the brain; if two skin-points are so close that their regions 
of irradiation in the cord overlap, then the two points touched 
cannot be discriminated in consciousness, since the brain region 
excited is in part common to both. The more powerful the 
stimulus the wider the irradiation in the cord, and hence the 
less accurate the discriminating power. The more often an 
impulse has travelled, the more does it tend to keep its own 
proper tract through the gray matter of the cord, and get 
on to its own proper brain-centre alone; hence the increase 
of tactile discrimination with practice, for we cannot suppose 
it to be due to a growth of more nerve-fibres down to the 
skin, and a rearrangement of the old, with smaller areas of 
anatomical distribution. As a general rule, more movable 
parts have smaller tactile areas; this probably depends on 
practice, since they are the parts which get the greatest 
number of different tactile stimulations. 

The Temperature Sense. By this we mean our faculty 
of perceiving cold and warmth; and, with the help of these 
sensations, of perceiving temperature differences in external 
objects. Its organ is the whole skin, the mucous membrane 
of mouth and fauces, pharynx and upper part of gullet, and 
the entry of the nares. Direct heating or cooling of a sensory 
nerve may stimulate it and cause pain, but not a true tem¬ 
perature sensation; and the amount of heat or cold requisite 
is much greater than that necessary when a temperature¬ 
perceiving surface is acted upon; hence we must assume the 
presence of temperature end organs. 

In a comfortable room we feel at no part of the Body 
either heat or cold, although different parts of its surface are- 


TO UGH. TEMPERA T URE SENS A TIONS. 


583 


at different temperatures; the fingers and nose being cooler 
than the trunk which is covered by clothes, and this, in turn, 
cooler than the interior of the mouth. The temperature 
which a given region of the temperature organ has (as 
measured by a thermometer) when it feels neither hot nor 
cold is. its temperature-sensation zero for that time, and is 
not associated with any one objective temperature; for not 
only, as we have just seen, does it vary in different parts of 
the organ, but also on the same part from time to time. 
Whenever a skin region passes with a certain rapidity to a 
temperature above its sensation zero we feel warmth; and 
vice versa: the sensation is more marked the greater the dif¬ 
ference, and the more suddenly it is produced; touching a 
metallic body, which conducts heat rapidly to or from the 
skin, causes a more marked hot or cold sensation than touching 
a worse conductor, as a piece of wood, of the same temperature. 

The change of temperature in the organ may be brought 
about by changes in the circulatory apparatus (more blood 
flowing through the skin warms it and less leads to its cool¬ 
ing), or by temperature changes in gases, liquids, or solids in 
contact with it. Sometimes we fail to distinguish clearly 
whether the cause is external or internal; a person coming in 
from a windy walk often feels a room uncomfortably warm 
which is not really so; the exercise has accelerated his circu¬ 
lation and tended to warm his skin, but the moving outer 
air has rapidly conducted off the extra heat; on entering the 
house the stationary air there does this less quickly, the skin 
becomes hotter, and the cause is supposed to be oppressive 
heat of the room. Hence, frequently, opening of windows 
and sitting in a draught, with its concomitant risks; whereas 
keeping quiet for five or ten minutes, until the circulation 
had returned to its normal rate, would attain the same end 
without danger. 

The acuteness of the temperature sense is greatest at tem¬ 
peratures within a few degrees of 30° C. (86° F.); at these 
differences of less than .1° C. can be discriminated. As a 
means of measuring absolute temperatures, however, the skin 
is very unreliable, on account of the changeability of its sen¬ 
sation zero. We can localize temperature sensations much 
as tactile, but not so accurately. 

Are Touch and Temperature Sensations of Different 
Modality ? Tactile and temperature feelings are ordinarily so 


584 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


very different that we can no more compare them than lumi¬ 
nous and auditory; and if we accept the modern modified 
form of the doctrine of specific nerve energies (Chap. XIII), 
in accordance with which the same sensory fibre when ex¬ 
cited always arouses a sensation of the same quality, if any, 
because it excites the same brain-centre, it is hard to conceive 
how the same fibre could at one time arouse a tactile, and at 
another a temperature sensation. It has, however, been 
maintained that touch and temperature feelings sometimes 
pass into one another insensibly. If a half dollar cooled to 5° 
C. (41° F.) be placed on a person’s brow, and then two (one 
on the other) warmed to 37° C. (98.5° F.), he commonly 
thinks the weight in the two cases is equal; i.e ., the tempera¬ 
ture difference leads to errors in his pressure judgments. But 
this does not prove an identity in the sensations; the cold 
half-dollar may produce contraction of the cutaneous tissues, 
leading to compression of the tactile end organs, which is 
mistaken, in mental interpretation, for a heavier pressure. 
When sensations are combined in other cases, as red and blue- 
green to produce w r hite, or partial tones to form a compound, 
we either cannot, or can but with difficulty, recognize the 
components; in this case the person feels both the cold and 
pressure distinctly when the half-dollar is laid on him. 

In certain cases a person mistakes the contact of a piece of 
raw cotton with his skin, for the approach of a warm object; 
this has been taken to prove that touch and temperature feel¬ 
ings graduate into one another. However, the feeble touch 
of the raw cotton might well be less felt than the increased 
temperature of the skin, due to diminished radiation when it 
was covered by this non-conducting substance; and the con¬ 
stancy with which, in the ordinary circumstances of life, we 
feel and discriminate clearly, on the same skin region at the 
same time, both temperature and touch sensations, is a strong 
argument against any transition of one into the other. 

Moreover, there is direct evidence that three different ap¬ 
paratuses in the skin or at least differently located apparatuses, 
are concerned in arousing touch, heat and cold sensations. If 
a metal point, lightly weighted, be slowly and evenly moved 
along the skin by clockwork, it gives rise to sensations of 
touch at some places and if hotter or cooler than the' skin 
to sensations of temperature at others; but never when in 
contact with one point to more than one sensation. If the 


PAIN. COMMON SENSATIONS. 


585 


points at which the observed person says I feel touch or I 
feel cold or I feel heat, be car'*fully marked on the skin and 
the experiment repeated on one or more subsequent days 
the contact points for the three sensations are found to be 
unchanged. In certain cases of spinal-cord disease, moreover, 
it has been noticed that tactile sensibility may be lost while 
temperature sensibility remains; and in others that the capac¬ 
ity of feeling warmth may be nearly or completely lost while 
cold sensation remains normal. Excluding pain (“ abnormal 
sensation”), we must conclude that there are in the skin 
three distinct sets of nerve-fibres:—One, when excited, arouses 
“ touch ” sensation; a second, “ warm ” sensation; the third, 
“ cold ” sensation. 

Pain and Common Sensibility. When the skin is power¬ 
fully stimulated by heat, cold or pressure, or is inflamed, we 
get a new sensation which we call pain. This is something 
quite different from the unpleasantness caused by a dazzling 
light or a musical discord or a disagreeable odor or taste. 
We recognize these as being still sight or sound or smell or 
taste sensations. Pain on the one hand is different from any 
of the normal skin sensations and, on the other, is recog¬ 
nized in consciousness as often proceeding from diseased in¬ 
ternal organs from which normally we get no noticeable sen¬ 
sations. An exposed healthy tendon is quite insensible to 
touch, but if it be inflamed the slightest pressure may give 
rise to nerve impulses causing very acute pain, and pain which 
to the consciousness is similar to cutaneous pains or pains of 
other organs. Since direct stimulation of the sensory nerves 
proceeding from the skin in any way except through their 
end organs gives rise to feelings of pain rather than to the 
special skin sensations, and pressure and temperature feelings 
do insensibly give way to pain feelings when the stimuli ap¬ 
plied to the skin are gradually increased, it has been supposed 
that pain is not due to excitation of a special nerve apparatus 
of its own, but to over-excitation of the tactile apparatus. 
On this theory it would be hard to account for the fact that 
skin pain is so very different in modality from a touch or tem¬ 
perature feeling, and to understand why it gives rise in con¬ 
sciousness to conceptions concerning a condition of the Body 
and not of some external object: it is not extrinsically referred 
by the mind to a quality of anything but the painful part itself, 
as a dazzling light sensation or a fetid odor is. There is also 


586 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


experimental and pathological evidence tliat the paths taken in 
the spinal cord by nerve impulses causing pain are different 
from those leading to a consciousness of touch. If certain 
parts of the cord are cut in the thoracic region of a rabbit, 
gentle touches on the hind limb appear to be felt; the animal 
erects its ears or moves its head: but powerful stimulation of 
the sciatic nerve causes no signs of pain, while if the posterior 
white columns be cut the animal still can feel stimuli applied 
to the hind limb and sufficient to cause pain under normal 
conditions, but it appears insensible to gentle pressure on the 
skin. In human beings very similar phenomena have been 
observed in cases of spinal-cord disease: and in a certain stage 
of chloroform or ether narcosis the patient feels the surgeon’s 
hand or his knife where it touches the skin, but he experiences 
no pain when deeper parts are cut. 

Such considerations seem to lead to the conclusion that the 
nerve-fibres and sense apparatuses concerned with painful 
sensations are quite distinct from those of all the special senses. 
If that be so we must also assume that there are “pain” 
fibres very widely distributed over the skin and through most 
other parts of the Body, and usually not so stimulated as to 
cause sensations which are present in consciousness. In acci¬ 
dent or disease the afferent impulses become powerful enough 
to arouse perception and imperiously call attention to danger. 
The nerve-fibres concerned may be named “ fibres of common 
sensibility,” and there is reason to believe that, normally, 
feeble afferent impulses travel along them from nearly all 
organs to the fore brain; but so weak and so uniform as not 
to excite a perceived feeling: these impulses would thus form 
a great background of subconscious feeling, on which special 
points from time to time become conspicuous as one or other 
nerve of special sense is stimulated or some fibre of common 
sensibility is abnormally excited. So far as the epidermis is 
concerned, the axis-cylinder branches, which end in it with¬ 
out any special terminal apparatus, may be specially fibres of 
common sensibility. 

Pains can be localized though but only imperfectly, and 
the less perfectly the more severe they are. The exact place 
of a needle prick after removal of the needle (so that there is 
no guiding concomitant touch sensation) cannot be recognized 
as well as pin touch on the same region of the skin, but still 
fairly well; while the acute pain caused by a small abscess 


PAIN. COMMON SENSATIONS. 


587 


(bone felon) under the periosteum of a finger bone is often 
felt all over the forearm; and a single diseased tooth may 
cause pain felt over the whole of that side of the face. This 
is probably due to imperfection in brain and spinal cord of the 
isolation of the paths of conduction of the nervous impulses 
concerned. 

Common Sensations. These agree with pain sensations in 
calling attention to conditions of our Bodies and not of outer 
things. Some of them, as general malaise and “ feeling well,” 
are probably due to modifications of the general inflow of im¬ 
pulses through the apparatus of common sensibility, not suffi¬ 
cient to cause a feeling of definite pain or pleasure. Others, 
as hunger, thirst and nausea, may have similar origin, but in 
a more localized region. 

Hunger and Thirst. These sensations, which regulate 
the taking of food, are peripherally localized in consciousness, 
the former in the stomach and the latter in the throat, and 
local conditions no doubt play a part in their production; 
though general states of the Body are also concerned. 

Hunger in its first stages is probably due to a condition of 
the gastric mucous membrane which comes on when the stom¬ 
ach has been empty some time, and it may be temporarily 
stilled by filling the organ with indigestible substances. But 
soon the feeling comes back intensified and can only be allayed 
by the ingestion of nutritive substances; provided these are 
absorbed and reach the blood, their mode of entry is unessen¬ 
tial; the hunger may be stayed by injections of food into the 
rectum as well as by putting it into the stomach. 

Similarly, thirst may be temporarily relieved by moisten¬ 
ing the throat without swallowing, but then soon returns; 
while it may be permanently relieved by water injections into 
the veins, without wetting the throat. 

While both sensations depend in part on local peripheral 
conditions, they may also be, and more powerfully, excited by 
poverty of the blood in foods and water; such deficiency 
probably directly stimulates hunger and thirst brain-centres. 

Smell. The region of the nostril nearest its outer end 
possesses the sense of touch, and most of its lining mucous 
membrane has common sensibility, which can be aroused by 
such substances as ammonia vapor: the nerve-fibres concerned 
in these feelings are derived from the superior maxillary branch 
of the fifth nerve. 


588 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The olfactory organ proper consists of the upper portions of 
the two nasal cavities, over which the endings of the olfactory 
nerves are spread and where the mucous membrane has a 
brownish-yellow color. This region (regio olfactoria) covers 
the upper and lower turbinate bones, which are expansions of 
the ethmoid on the outer wall of the nostril chamber, the 
opposite part of the partition between the nares, and the part 
of the roof of the nose separating it from the cranial cavity. 
The epithelium covering the mucous membrane contains three 
varieties of cells (2, Fig. 173). The cells of one set are much 
like ordinary columnar epithelium, but with long branched 
processes attached to their deeper ends; mixed with these are 

peculiar cells, each of which has 
a large nucleus surrounded by a 
little protoplasm; a slender ex¬ 
ternal process reaching to the sur¬ 
face ; and a very slender deep one. 
The latter cells have been sup¬ 
posed to be the proper olfactory 
end organs, and to be connected 
with the fibres of the olfactory 
nerve, which enter the deeper 
strata of the epithelium and there 
divide. In Amphibia the corre¬ 
sponding cells have fine filaments 
on their free ends. The cells of 
the third kind are irregular in 
form and lie in several rows in the 
deeper parts of the epithelium. 
It may be that the cylindrical cells 
if not (as is possible) directly con¬ 
cerned in olfaction, have import¬ 
ant functions in regard to the 
nourishment of the olfactory cells 
which they surround; they may 

' 'tcoo, w, aj uvi uuv , ^ 

olfactory nerve, seen dividing into tor example Supply them With 
fine peripheral branches at a. 

needtul material, as the pigment- 
cells of the retina are concerned in the formation of visual 
purple in the rods. 

Odorous substances, the stimuli of the olfactory apparatus, 
are always gaseous and frequently act powerfully when present 
in very small amount. We cannot, however, classify them by 



Fig. 173.—Cells from the olfactory 
epithelium. 1, from the frog. 2, 
from man; a , columnar cell, with 
its branched deep process; 6, so- 
called olfactory cell; c, its narrow 
outer process; d, its slender central 
process. 3, gray nerve-fibres of the 



















TASTE. 


589 


the sensations they arouse, or arrange them in series; and 
smells are but minor sensory factors in our mental life, al¬ 
though very powerful associations of memory are often aroused 
by odors. We commonly refer them to external objects, since 
we find that the sensation is intensified by ‘ ‘ sniffing ’ ’ air into 
the nose, and ceases when the nostrils are closed. Their 
peripheral localization is, however, imperfect, for we confound 
many smells with tastes (see below); nor can we well judge of 
the direction of an odorous body through the olfactory sen¬ 
sations which it arouses. 

Taste. The organ of taste is the mucous membrane on 
the dorsum of the tongue and, in some persons, of the soft 
palate and fauces. The nerves concerned are the glosso- 
pharyngeals, distributed over the hind part of the tongue, 
and the lingual tranches of the inferior maxillary division of 
the trigeminals on its anterior two thirds. 

On the tongue most of the sensory nerves run to papillae; 
the circumvallate have the richest supply, and on these are 
peculiar end organs (Fig. 174) known as taste buds ; they 



Fig. 174.—Taste-buds. 


are oval and imbedded in the epidermis covering the side 
of the papilla. Each consists, externally, of a number of flat, 
fusiform, nucleated cells and, internally, of six or eight so- 
called taste-cells. The latter are much like the olfactory cells 
of the nose, and are probably connected with nerve-fibres at 
their deeper ends. The capsule formed by the enveloping 
cells has a small opening on the surface; each taste-cell termi¬ 
nates in a very fine thread which there protrudes. Taste- 
buds are also found on some of the fungiform papillae, and 
it is possible that simpler structures, not yet recognized, and 
consisting of single taste-cells are widely spread over the 







590 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


tongue, since the sense of taste exists where no taste-buds caji 
be found. The filiform papillae are probably tactile. 

That substances be tasted they must be in solution: wipe 
the tongue dry and put a crystal of sugar on it; no taste 
will be felt until exuding moisture has dissolved some of the 
crystal. Excluding the feelings aroused by acid substances, 
tastes proper may be divided into sweet, bitter, acid, and 
saline. Although contributing much to the pleasures of 
life, they are intellectually, like smells, of small value; the 
perceptions we attain through them as to qualities of external 
objects being of little use, except as aiding in the selection of 
food, and for that purpose they are not safe guides at all 
times. 

Many so-called tastes (flavors) are really smells; odoriferous 
particles of substances which are being eaten reach the olfac¬ 
tory region through the posterior nares and arouse sensations 
which, since they accompany the presence of objects in the 
mouth, we take for tastes. Such is the case, e.g., with most 
spices; when the nasal chambers are blocked or inflamed by 
a cold in the head, or closed by compressing the nose, the so- 
called taste of spices is not perceived when they are eaten; all 
that is felt, when cinnamon, e.g ., is chewed under such cir¬ 
cumstances is a certain pungency due to its stimulating nerves 
of common sensation in the tongue. This fact is sometimes 
taken advantage of in the practice of domestic medicine when 
a nauseous dose, as rhubarb, is to be given to a child. Tactile 
sensations play also a part in many so-called tastes. 

As the tongue, in addition to taste functions, possesses 
tactile, temperature, and general sensibility, its nerve ap¬ 
paratus must be complex; and there is even reason to be¬ 
lieve that different nerve-fibres with presumably different end 
organs are concerned in the different true tastes. Most 
persons taste bitter things better with the back part of the 
tongue and sweet things with the tip, and in some persons 
the separation of function is quite complete. Chemical com¬ 
pounds are known which in such persons cause a pure sweet 
sensation if placed on the tongue tip and a pure bitter sensa¬ 
tion if placed in the region of the circumvallate papillae; 
these facts seem to show that the fibres concerned in bitter 
and sweet sensation are distinct. Again, if leaves of a certain 
plant (Gymnema sylvestre) be chewed, the capacity to taste 
sweet or bitter things is lost for some time, but salts and acids 


THE MUSCULAR SENSE. 


591 


are tasted as well as usual; and most persons taste salines 
better at the sides of the tongue than elsewhere; so that the 
salt and acid sensations seem to have a different apparatus, not 
only from the sweet and bitter, but from one another. 

The Muscular Sense. The muscles are endowed with com¬ 
mon sensibility, as proved by the pains of cramp and fatigue, 
but in connection with them we have other sensations of great 
importance, although they do not often become so obtrusive 
in consciousness as to arouse separate attention. Certain of 
these feelings (muscle sensations 'proper) are due to the ex¬ 
citation of sensory nerves ending within the muscles them¬ 
selves: others (innervation sensations) have possibly a central 
origin and accompany the starting of volitional impulses from 
brain-cells; they are only felt in connection with the voluntary 
skeletal muscles. 

We have at any moment a fairly accurate knowledge of the 
position of various parts of our Bodies, even when we do not 
see them; and we can also judge fairly accurately the extent 
of a movement made with the eyes shut. The afferent nerve 
impulses concerned in the development of such judgments may 
be various; different parts of the skin are pressed or creased; 
different joints are subjected to pressure; different tendons 
are put on the stretch and different muscles are in different 
states of contraction, and it is by no means easy to determine 
the part played in each case by the sensory nerves of the 
different organs. Moreover, when we push against an object, 
ror lift it, we are able to form a judgment as to the amount of 
effort exerted; but here again pressure on skin and joints and 
tension of tendons come in. Although under normal circum¬ 
stances the skin sensations are undoubtedly of importance, they 
are not necessary: persons with cutaneous paralysis can, apart 
from sight, judge truly the position of a limb and the extent 
of movement made by it; and in many movements change in 
joint pressure must be very little if any. We have then to 
look to muscles and tendons themselves for an important 
part of the sensations, and in both muscles and tendons there 
are organs in connection with nerve-fibres which are certainly 
sensory in nature: moreover, muscle sensory nerves, whether 
through the organs of Golgi or some other end organ, appear 
to be excited by mere passive change of form in the muscle: 
with the eyes closed each of us can tell how much another 
person has lifted one of our arms. 


592 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Whether, in addition to the true muscle sense, dependent 
on afferent impulses sent to the brain from the contracted 
muscle or its tendons, we have a more direct consciousness of 
the amount of will exerted to produce a given muscular con¬ 
traction, and can form thereby a judgment as to the extent 
of the movement or effort, is a question still in dispute. A 
main argument in favor of the existence of such centrally origi¬ 
nating ‘ ‘ innervation sensations ’ ’ is based on phenomena ob¬ 
served in persons afflicted with paresis. They frequently 
judge erroneously for a time as to the extent of movements made 
by them, thinking that the movement is greater than it really 
is. It is argued that in such cases the error cannot be based 
on peripheral sensations, but must be due to the fact that 
the person judges by the amount of volitional effort he has 
made, which was such as in his previous condition of health 
would have produced a greater muscular contraction than it 
now does in his paretic condition. It is especially in connec¬ 
tion with eye muscles that such errors have been noticed. 
When we follow a moving object with the eyes we judge of 
the rate of movement by the degree of contraction of the ocular 
muscles needed to keep its image on the two foveas: if the eye 
muscles become suddenly enfeebled the person at first thinks 
he turns his eyeballs faster than he really does and hence that 
the object is moving faster than it actually does: or he may not 
move his eye at all when he has willed to do so, and hence 
conclude that stationary objects are in motion because their 
images are still formed on the same region of the retina, which 
could not be the case with stationary objects if the position of 
the eyes were changed. 

Whether the sensations by which we judge the extent of a 
muscular movement be entirely peripheral or in part central, 
they enable us to determine very minute differences of con¬ 
traction: the ocular determination of the distance of an object 
not too far off to have its absolute distance determined with 
considerable accuracy, depends almost entirely upon judg¬ 
ments based upon very small changes in the degree of con¬ 
traction of the internal and external straight {recti) muscles, 
converging or diverging the eyeballs; and of the ciliary muscle 
determining the necessary accommodation of the lens. A 
singer, too, must be able to judge with great minuteness the 
degree of contraction of the small muscles of the larynx nec¬ 
essary to produce a certain tension of the vocal cords. It may 


THE MUSCULAR SENSE. 


593 


be well to point out that we do not refer a muscular sensation 
to any given muscle or muscles: it is merely associated with a 
certain movement or position, and a person who knows noth¬ 
ing about his ocular muscles can judge distance through sen¬ 
sations derived from them, quite as well as any anatomist* 
This fact is of course correlated with the fact that in voluntary 
movement we do not make a conscious effort to contract any 
particular muscles: the higher nerve centres are merely con¬ 
cerned with the initiation of a given movement of a given ex¬ 
tent, and all the details are carried out by lower co-ordinating 
centres. In ordinary daily life in fact we have no interest 
whatever in a muscular contraction per se; all we are con¬ 
cerned with is the result, and consciousness has never had need 
to trouble itself, if it could, with associating a particular feel¬ 
ing or a particular movement with any individual muscle. 

Muscular feelings are, as already pointed out, frequently 
and closely combined not only with visual but also with tactile, 
in providing sensations on which to base judgments: in the 
dark, when an object is of such size and form that it cannot 
be felt all over by any one region of the skin, we' deduce its 
shape and extent by combining the tactile feelings it gives rise 
to, with the muscular feelings accompanying the movements 
of the hands over it. Even when the eyes are used the sen¬ 
sations attained through them mainly serve as short-cuts which 
we have learned by experience to interpret, as telling us what 
tactile and muscular feelings the object seen would give us if 
felt; and, in regard to distant points, although we have learnt 
to apply arbitrarily selected standards of measurement, it is 
probable that distance, in relation to perception, is primarily 
a judgment as to how much muscular effort would be needed 
to come into contact with the thing looked at. 

When we wish to estimate the weight of an object we al¬ 
ways, when possible, lift it, and so combine muscular with 
tactile sensations. By this means we can form much better 
judgments. While with touch alone just perceptibly differ¬ 
ent pressures have the ratio 1:3, with the muscular sense 
added differences of can be perceived. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 


THE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 

The Special Physiology of Nerve-Centres. We have al¬ 
ready studied the general physiological properties of nerves 
and nerve-centres (Chap. XIII) and found that while the 
former are mere transmitters of nervous impulses, the latter 
do much more than merely conduct. In some cases the centres 
are automatic ; they originate nerve impulses, as illustrated by 
the rhythmic impulses starting from the respiratory centre. 
In other cases a feeble impulse reaching the centre gives rise to 
a great discharge of energy from it (as when an unexpected 
noise produces a violent start, due to many impulses sent out 
from the excited centre to numerous muscles), so that certain 
centres are irritable. Such nerve-centres contain a store of 
energy-liberating material which only needs a slight disturb¬ 
ance to upset its equilibrium and initiate powerful efferent 
impulses as the result of one feeble afferent. Further, the im¬ 
pulses thus liberated are co-ordinated. When mucus in the 
larynx tickles the throat and excites afferent nerve impulses, 
these, reaching a centre, cause discharges along many efferent 
fibres, so combined in sequence and power as to produce, not 
a mere aimless spasm, but a cough which clears the passage. 
In very many cases the excitation of centres, with or without 
at the same time some of the above phenomena, is associated 
with sensations or other states of consciousness. 

We have now to study which of these powers is manifested 
by different parts of the central cerebro-spinal nervous system, 
and under what circumstances and in what degree: and also 
some of the phenomena of conduction in spinal cord and 
brain. 

Conduction in the Spinal Cord. The spinal cord, form¬ 
ing (except the slender sympathetic) the only direct com¬ 
munication between the brain and most of the nerves of the 
Body, was considered by the older physiologists as merely a 
huge nerve-trunk, into which the various spinal nerves were 

594 


THE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 595 


collected on their way to the encephalon. It does, it is true, 
contain the paths for the conduction of all those impulses 
which, originating in the cerebrum, give rise to voluntary 
movements of the trunk and limbs; also for all the centrally 
travelling impulses which give rise to sensations ascribed to 
those parts; and it is also the path for certain impulses giving 
rise to involuntary movements as, for example, those which, 
originating in the respiratory centre, travel to the phrenic and 
intercostal nerves. 

If, however, the cord were merely collected and continued 
nerve-roots it ought to increase considerably in hulk as it ap¬ 
proached the skull, and this it does not do in anything like 
the required proportion; a histological enumeration also shows 
that the total number of fibres cut across in a transverse sec¬ 
tion of the cord in the upper cervical region is far less than 
the total number of fibres in all the spinal nerve-roots. Most 
of the root-fibres, in fact, pass at once into the central gray 
mass and their axis cylinders end in its cells, or lose their in¬ 
dividuality by joining its network of cell branches and fine 
non-medullated fibres. Most of the fibres of the anterior root 
end in nerve-cells near the level at which they join the cord, 
especially in the cells of the anterior horns: many of the fibres 
of the posterior roots also join the gray network, either at or 
a little above or a little below the level at which they reach 
the cord, but some appear to run on to the brain without en¬ 
tering the gray core. Those which do pass into it probably 
break up in its network and are not directly continued into 
a cell, but this is still uncertain. In correspondence with the 
fact that most of the spinal nerve-fibres have their primary ter¬ 
mination in it near their point of entry, is the fact that the 
amount of gray matter at any level is greater or less accord¬ 
ing as the nerve-roots at that level are large or small: the 
cervical and lumbar enlargements for example are almost 
entirely due to increase of gray matter in those regions. 
When we make a voluntary movement of a limb the impulse 
orginating in the brain does not pass directly to the motor 
nerves of the muscles concerned, but to a mechanism in the 
gray matter of the cord, which is in connection with those 
muscles; and when we feel an object touching the finger, the 
afferent impulses probably, though not so certainly, first enter 
the gray core of the cord and thence make a fresh start to 
the brain. When the blood-vessels constrict on painful stimu- 


598 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


lation of tlie sciatic nerve, impulses must travel from the 
lumbar enlargement of the cord to the vaso-constrictor centre 
in the medulla and reflex atferent impulses from it down the 
» cord to the region of the gray matter from which the anterior 
roots conveying motor fibres for the blood-vessels pass out 
Although part of the whole course of such impulses lies 
in the gray core, yet most of it, in the normal physiological 
working of the Body lies, so far as the cord is concerned, 
in its white columns, and we have now to try and track 
these paths: as also paths of special conduction between 
ditferent regions of the spinal gray matter themselves. The 
gray matter of the cord being directly continuous with the 
gray matter of the medulla oblongata and through it with that 
of some other parts of the brain can transmit impulses after 
all the white columns of the cord have been divided, but with 
such conduction we are not for the present concerned. 

To determine the special paths in the white substance of 
the cord from and to the brain several methods have been 
employed. Experiment on animals as to loss of sensation or 
the power of voluntary movement in parts supplied by nerves 
arising from the cord posterior to a partial transverse section 
give on the whole unsatisfactory results: partly because of the 
difficulty in exactly limiting the section and partly because 
of the general shock to the nervous system resulting from the 
operation. Still something has been learned in that way, 
and something also from observations on persons suffering 
from more or less localized diseases of the spinal cord. Direct 
stimulation of parts of the cord exposed by transverse section 
have also given some results; hut more satisfactory evidence 
as to tracts of conduction between the brain and cord have 
been obtained by the Wallerian method and by the study 
of development. Kemoval or disease of certain parts of 
the brain and partial cross-sections of portions of it or of 
the cord itself, give rise to degeneration of localized groups of 
fibres in parts of the cord posterior to the disease or injury; 
these are tracts of descending degeneration. Partial cross- 
section of other parts of the cord or of the posterior spinal 
roots lead to degenerations above the injury or ascending de¬ 
generations: and in general all the fibres which degenerate as 
a result of a given injury acquire in embryonic development 
their medullary sheaths at the same time, which is different 
from the period at which other groups acquire theirs. Finally, 


THE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 597 


some regions of the white substance of the cord undergo no 
degeneration as the result of injuries above or below them. 

The details as to the result of sections or injuries at various 
levels differ considerably, but their broad features are indi¬ 
cated in Fig. 175, in which tracts of descending degeneration 



Fig. 175.—Diagram of a cross-section of the spinal cord near the upper part of 
the cervical enlargement to indicate the main tracts of ascending and descending 
degenerations. The gray matter is in solid black; tracts of descending degenera¬ 
tion are shaded in vertical and of ascending in horizontal lines; pt, pyramidal or 
crossed pyramidal tract; dpt, direct pyramidal tract; deal, descending antero¬ 
lateral tract-, ct, comma tract; cbt. cerebellar tract; ac-al, ascending antero-lateral 
tract; s, e, t, c, posterior median tract; It, tract of Lissauer; epc, external posterior 
column; i.al internal antero-lateral column. 

are shaded in vertical lines, and of ascending degeneration in 
black. It represents a cross-section of the cord at about the 
level of the fifth cervical nerve. The descending area of de¬ 
generation, pt, is the pyramidal tract or crossed pyramidal 
tract; its fibres degenerate posterior to any hemisection of the 
cord on the same side, and to section of the anterior pyramid 
of the medulla oblongata, or of the crus cerebri on the 
opposite side, or as a result of disease or lesions of certain 
parts of the convolutions of the cerebral hemisphere of the 
opposite side. This tract is large in the upper part of the 
cord and becomes smaller the further down it is examined, 
because fibres are all the way separating from it to end in the 
gray matter of the cord, where they join the mechanisms from 
which the motor fibres of the anterior spinal roots arise. The 
fibres of the pyramidal tract originate and have their nutri¬ 
tive centres in what is known as the motor area of the 
cerebral cortex: from there they converge and are collected 
into the ventral portion of the crus cerebri and pass through 
it and the pons Varolii to the ventral median portion (an¬ 
terior pyramid) of the medulla oblongata, and there cross the 




598 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


middle line at wliat is known as the decussation of the pyr¬ 
amids and enter the spinal cord on the opposite side. The 
area of descending degeneration, dpt , lying close to the an¬ 
terior fissure is the direct pyramidal tract. Its fibres arise in 
the same cerebral region as those of pyramidal tract, and have a 
similar course and ending, except that they do not cross to the 
other side in the medulla oblongata, but gradually pass over 
in the spinal cord itself, to end in the gray matter connected 
with the origin of the anterior spinal roots: the direct pyram¬ 
idal tract does not extend so far down the cord as the crossed 
tract, pt. Another tract of descending degeneration is dc.al , 
the descending antero-lateral: it represents rather an area over 
which are to be found some degenerated fibres scattered among 
many undegenerated, than a distinct group of fibres. The 
same may be said of ct , the comma tract: it only extends 
a short way down in the external posterior column of the cord 
after a hemisection has been made on the same side. Its fibres 
are posterior root-fibres running back in the white matter a 
little distance before entering the gray core. 

A conspicuous tract of ascending degeneration is the cere - 
bellar tract cb.t. It lies on the outer side of the pyramidal 
tract and can be traced along the dorsal side of the medulla 
oblongata to the cerebellum. It commences in the lumbar 
region of the cord, and seems to contain two sets of fibres; 
some originating in the gray matter and passing on to re-enter 
it at a higher level of the cord; and others continued to the 
cerebellum. The nerve-fibres of this tract are very large. 
Another important ascending tract, s, e, t , c, lies in the median 
portion of the posterior white column and is named the median 
posterior tract. It commences in the lower portion of the 
cord and gradually increases in size upwards. Its degenera¬ 
tion follows not only section of the posterior column, but 
section of the dorsal roots of the spinal nerves: sections of 
these roots in the sacral, lumbar, thoracic, and cervical nerves 
cause degenerations in the areas marked respectively s, e, t, c; 
hemisection of the cord is followed above the section by de¬ 
generations in this tract corresponding to all tne spinal nerves 
which join the cord below the section. The posterior median 
tract is lost as a distinct tract in the medulla oblongata: its 
fibres are nearly all small. Th e.ascending antero-lateral tract, 
ac.al , contains many fibres which undergo degeneration after 
section of the cord on the same side, mixed with many fibres 


THE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 599 


which do not degenerate. It resembles the cerebellar tract 
and differs from the median posterior in only undergoing de¬ 
generation after section of the cord itself, and not of the pos¬ 
terior roots also. The upward ending of its fibres is still 
uncertain, hut is probably in the cerebellum: the origin of the 
fibres is in the gray matter of the cord. 

Allowing for all the tracts of degeneration above described 
it will be seen that considerable portions of the white col¬ 
umns of the cord (left unshaded in Fig. 175) are un¬ 
affected: at the most, trifling degenerations extending a little 
way above or below the point of cross-section are found. 
Some of these are due to bundles of posterior root-fibres which 
run for a short distance in the external posterior column, epc , 
before separating into two sets, one entering the gray matter 
of the posterior cornu, the other passing into the internal 
median tract. Another bundle of posterior root-fibres runs 
up in the cord a short way in what • is named the column of 
Lissauer , It , and gives rise to an ascending degeneration ex¬ 
tending a short way above any hemisection. The main bulk 
of the unshaded parts of the figure, however, represents longi¬ 
tudinal fibres which do not degenerate up or down after section 
of the cord: they appear, therefore, to have nutritive centres 
at each end; and probably are fibres uniting different levels 
of the gray matter. In addition to the longitudinal are of 
course some horizontal: these are partly fibres of spinal roots 
passing into the gray core, partly medullated fibres crossing 
the middle line in the anterior white commissure; and in 
addition to fibres of the gray matter proper uniting its halves 
across the middle line are many fine medullated fibres which 
run dorso-ventrally and from side to side in it. 

As regards longitudinal conduction in the white columns of 
the cord, we may sum up the main facts as follows: The py¬ 
ramidal and direct pyramidal tracts consist of efferent fibres 
uniting the cerebral cortex with various levels of the gray 
matter of the cord from which motor fibres for the voluntary 
muscles pass out. The descending antero-lateral tract prob¬ 
ably also contains efferent fibres uniting the Wain with 
different parts of the gray matter of the cord. The cerebellar 
and ascending lateral tracts convey afferent impulses from the 
gray matter of the cord to the brain, but are only indirectly 
connected with the fibres of the dorsal spinal roots. The 
median posterior tract is afferent and mainly made of fibres 


oOO 


THE HUMAN BOD Y. 


which pass directly from the dorsal spinal roots to the brain 
without intervention of the gray matter of the cord; but some 
of its fibres pass into the gray matter of the cord before 
reaching the medulla oblongata. Finally, the tracts which 
show no special ascending or descending degenerations are 
mainly made of longitudinal commissural fibres uniting differ¬ 
ent regions of the gray matter of the cord. 

The Spinal Cord as a Reflex Centre. In order to explain 
physiological facts we must assume in addition to the special 
paths of union between parts of the gray matter of the cord 
afforded by certain fibres of the white columns, first, that a 
nervous impulse entering the gray network at any point may, 
under certain conditions, travel all through it, and give rise 
to efferent impulses emerging at any level; and, on the other 
hand, that there are certain lines or paths of easiest propa¬ 
gation between different points in this network, which the 
impulses keep to under ordinary conditions. 

When a frog is decapitated it lies down squat on its belly 
instead of assuming the more erect position of the uninjured 
animal; its respiratory movements cease (their centre being 
removed with the medulla); the hind legs at first remain 
sprawled out in any position into which they may happen to 
fall, but after a time are drawn up into their usual position, 
with the hip and knee-joints flexed; having made this move¬ 
ment the animal, if protected from external stimuli, makes no 
other by its skeletal muscles; it has lost all spontaneity, and 
only stirs under the influence of immediate excitation. Nev¬ 
ertheless the heart goes on beating for hours; the muscles 
and nerves, when examined, are found to still have all their 
usual physiological properties; and, by suitable irritation, the 
animal can be made to execute a great variety of complex 
movements. But it is no longer a creature with a will, doing 
things which we cannot predict; it is an instrument which 
can be played upon, giving different responses to different 
stimuli (as different notes are produced when different keys 
of a piano are struck), and always the same reaction to the 
same stimulus; so that we can say beforehand what will hap¬ 
pen when we touch it. Such actions are called reflex or excito- 
motor and fall into two groups: (1) orderly or purpose-lilce 
reflexes , which are correlated to the stimulus and are often 
defensive, tending, for instance, to remove an irritated part 
from the irritating object; (2) disorderly or convulsive reflexes , 


THE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 601 


not tending to produce any definite result, and affecting either 
a limited region or all the muscles of the body. 

In higher animals similar phenomena may be observed. If 
a rabbit’s spinal cord be divided at the bottom of the neck the 
animal is at first thrown into a flaccid limp condition like the 
frog, but it soon recovers. Voluntary movements in muscles 
supplied from the spinal cord behind the section are never seen 
again; but on pinching the hind foot it is forcibly withdrawn. 
Men, whose spinal cord has been divided by stabs or disease 
below the level of the fifth cervical spinal roots (above which 
the fibres of the phrenic nerve, which are necessary for breath¬ 
ing, pass out), sometimes live for a time, but can no longer move 
their legs by any effort of the will, nor do they feel touches, 
pinches, or hot things applied to them; if, however, the soles 
of the feet he tickled the legs are thrown into vigorous move¬ 
ment. As a rule, however, orderly reflexes are less marked 
and less numerous in the higher animals; in them the organ¬ 
ization is less machine-like, the spinal cord being more the 
servant of the larger brain, and less capable of working with¬ 
out directions. Such animals, when intact, can to a greater 
extent control the muscular responses which shall be made to 
stimuli under various conditions; they have less automatic 
protection in the ordinary risks of life, hut a greater range of 
possible protection. The human spinal cord, controlled by 
the brain, can adapt the reactions of the Body, with great 
nicety, to a vast variety of conditions; the frog’s cord by itself 
does this for a smaller number of possible emergencies without 
troubling at all such brain as the animal has, hut is less com¬ 
pletely under the control of the higher centres for adaptation 
to other and more complex conditions. The difference being, 
however, hut one of degree and not of kind, it is best to 
approach the study of the reflex actions of the human spinal 
cord through an examination of those exhibited by the frog. 

The Ordinary Reflex Movements of a Decapitated 
Frog. For the occurrence of these the following parts must be 
intact: {a) the end organs of sensory nerve-fibres; (£) afferent 
fibres from these to the cord; (c) efferent fibres from the 
cord to the muscles; (d) the part of the spinal cord between 
the afferent and efferent fibres; (e) the muscles concerned in 
the movement. If the decapitated animal be suspended ver¬ 
tically after the shock of the operation is over, it makes a few 
attempts to hold its hind legs in their usual flexed position; 


602 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


these soon cease, the legs hang down, and the creature comes 
to rest. If one flank be now gently scratched with the point 
of a pencil a reflex movement occurs, limited to the muscles 
of that region; they twitch, somewhat as a horse’s neck when 
tickled by flies. If a pinch with small forceps be given 
at the same spot, more muscles on the same side come 
into play; a harder pinch causes also the hind leg of that 
side to be raised to push away the offending object; more 
violent and prolonged irritation causes all the muscles of 
the body to contract, and the animal is convulsed. Here 
then we see that a feeble stimulation causes a limited and 
purpose-like response; stronger causes a wider radiation of 
efferent impulses from the cord and the contraction of 
more muscles, but still the movements are co-ordinated to 
an end; while abnormally powerful stimulation of the sen¬ 
sory nerves throws all the motor fibres arising from the 
cord into activity, and calls forth inco-ordinate spasmodic 
action. The orderly movements are very uniform for a given 
stimulation; if the anal region be pinched, both hind legs are 
raised to push away the forceps; if a tiny bit of bibulous paper 
moistened with dilute vinegar be put on the thigh, the lower 
part of that leg is raised to wipe it off; if on the middle of the 
hack near the head, both feet are wiped over the spot; if on 
one flank, the leg and foot of that side are used, and so on; 
in fact, by careful working, the frog’s skin can be mapped 
into many regions, the application of acidulated water to each 
causing one particular movement, due to the co-ordinated 
contractions of muscles in different combinations, and never, 
under ordinary circumstances, any but that one movement. 
The above purpose-like reflex movements may all be charac¬ 
terized as defensive, but all orderly reflexes are not so. For 
example, in the breeding season the male frog clasps the female 
for several days with his fore limbs. If a male at this season 
be decapitated and left to recover from the shock, it will be 
found that gently rubbing his sternal region with the finger 
causes him to clasp it vigorously. 

Disorderly Reflexes or Reflex Convulsions. These come 
on when an afferent nerve-trunk is stimulated instead of the 
tactile end organs in the skin; or when the skin is very power¬ 
fully excited; or, with feeble stimuli, in certain diseased states 
(pathological tetanus), and under the influence of certain 
poisons, especially strychnine. If a frog or a warm-blooded 


THE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 603 


animal be given a dose of the latter drug, a stimulus, such as 
normally would excite only limited orderly reflexes, will excite 
the whole cord, and lead to discharges along all the efferent 
fibres so that general convulsions result. It has been clearly 
proved that, in such cases, not the skin, or afferent or efferent 
nerves, or the muscles, but the spinal cord itself is affected by 
the poison (at least primarily), unless unnecessarily large doses 
have been given. 

The Least-Resistance Hypothesis. In order to compre¬ 
hend reflex acts we must assume a manifold union of afferent 
with efferent nerve-fibres; this is anatomically afforded by the 
minute plexus of the gray network, w T hich is continuous through 
the whole cord, and in which many fibres of the anterior and 
posterior nerve-roots directly or indirectly end. The contin¬ 
uity of this network serves to explain general reflex convul¬ 
sions, and the spread of an afferent impulse, or its results, 
through the whole cord, with the consequent emission of effe¬ 
rent impulses through many or all the anterior roots; but, on 
the other hand, it renders it difficult to understand limited 
and orderly reflexes, in which only a few efferent fibres are 
stimulated. To explain them we have to assume a great re¬ 
sistance to conduction in the gray network, so that a nerve 
impulse entering it is soon blocked and transmuted into some 
other form of energy; hence it only reaches efferent fibres 
originating near the point at which it enters, or fibres placed 
in specially easy communication with that. When the frog’s 
flank is tickled, only muscles innervated from anterior roots 
on the same side of the body, and springing from the same 
level of the cord, are made to contract; when the stimulus is 
more powerful, the stronger afferent impulse radiates farther, 
but mainly in directions determined by lines of conductivity 
in the cord; e.g ., to' the origin of the efferent fibres which 
cause lifting of the hind leg to the irritated spot. These 
paths of easiest conduction, or of least resistance, in some 
cases lie in the gray matter itself, in others in the inter-central 
or commissural fibres of the highly conductive medullated 
kind, which, passing out of the gray substance at one level, 
run in the white columns to it at another, where the efferent 
fibres of the muscles called into play originate. A still stronger 
afferent impulse radiates wider still, and, liberating energy 
from all the nerve-cells in the gray matter, produces a useless 
general convulsion. Under the influence of strychnine and 



604 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


in pathological tetanus (as observed, for example, in hydro¬ 
phobia), the conductivity of the whole gray matter is so in¬ 
creased that all paths through it are easy, and so a feeble 
afferent impulse spreads in all directions. 

To account for the phenomena of localized skin sensations 
and of limited voluntary movements we must make a similar 
hypothesis. If the nervous impulses entering the gray net¬ 
work of the cord or, through fibres of the posterior median 
tract, the gray matter of the medulla oblongata, when the 
tip of a finger is touched spread all through it irregularly, 
we could not tell what region of the skin had been stimu¬ 
lated, for the central results of stimulating the most varied 
peripheral parts would be the same. From each region of the 
gray network where a sensory skin-nerve enters there must, 
therefore, be a special path of conduction to an anterior brain 
region, producing results which differ recognizably in con¬ 
sciousness from those following the stimulation of a different 
skin region. Possibly for true touch and temperature sensa¬ 
tions these paths are in the post-median tract. The acuteness of 
the localizing power will largely depend on the definiteness 
of the path of least resistance in the gray matter, since while 
traveling in a medullated nerve-fibre from the skin to the 
cord, or (in the white columns) from the gray matter of the 
latter to the brain, the nervous impulse is confined to a definite 
track. Hence anything tending to let the afferent impulse 
radiate when it enters the gray network will diminish the ac¬ 
curacy with which its peripheral origin can be located. This 
we see in violent pains; a whitlow on the finger affects only 
a few nerve-fibres, but gives rise to so powerful nerve impulses 
that when they reach the cord they spread widely and, break¬ 
ing out of the usual track of propagation to the brain, give 
rise to ill-localized feelings of pain often referred all the way 
up the arm to the elbow. Such cases are comparable to the 
transformation of an orderly reflex into a general convulsion 
when the stimulus increases. 

As animals exhibit no, or at most limited, spontaneous move¬ 
ments when their whole cerebral hemispheres are removed, we 
conclude that the nerve impulses giving rise to such movements 
normally start in those parts of the brain. Thence they travel 
down the pyramidal tracts of the cord to its gray matter, which 
they enter at different levels, each in the neighborhood of a 
centre for producing a given movement. If they there radiated 


TEE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 605 


far and wide no definite movement could result, for all the 
muscles supplied from the cord would he made to contract, 
and not merely those necessary to bend the index finger, for 
example. AYe must here again, therefore, assume a path of 
least resistance for the propagation of nerve impulses from a 
given fibre coming down from the brain, to the efferent fibres 
going to a certain muscle or group of muscles. The path 
between the two is almost certainly not direct; a co-ordinating 
spinal centre intervenes, and all that the brain has to do is 
to excite this centre, which then secures the proper muscular 
co-ordination. If the hand be laid flat on the table and its 
palm be rolled over, many muscles, including thousands of 
muscular fibres, have to contract in definite order and sequence. 
Persons who have not studied anatomy and who are quite 
ignorant of the muscles to be used can perform the movement 
perfectly; and even a skilled anatomist and physiologist, if 
he knew them all and their actions, could not by conscious 
effort combine them so well as the cord does without such 
direct interference. AYe have then to look on the cord as 
containing a host of co-ordinating centres for different muscles. 
These centres are put in nervous connection, on the one hand, 
with certain regions of the skin, and, on the other, with regions 
of the brain, and may be excited from either; in the former 
case the movement is called reflex; in the latter it may be 
reflex, or may be accompanied with a feeling of “ will ” and 
is then called voluntary. The more accurately the required 
centre, and no other, is excited, the more definite and precise 
the movement. 

The Education of the Cord. Much of what is called edu¬ 
cating our touch or our muscles is really education of the 
spinal cord. A person who begins to play the piano finds at 
first much difficulty in moving his fingers independently; the 
nervous impulses from the brain to the cord radiate from the 
spinal centres of the muscle which it is desired to move, to 
others. But with practice the independent movements be¬ 
come easy. So, too, the localizing power of the skin can be 
greatly increased by exercise as one observes in blind per¬ 
sons, who often can distinguish two stimuli on parts of the 
skin which are so near together as to give only one sensation 
to other people. Such phenomena depend on the fact that 
the more often a nervous impulse has traveled along a given 
road in the gray matter, the easier does its path become, and 





606 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the less does it tend to wander from it into others. We 
may compare the gray matter to a thicket; persons seeking to 
beat a road through from one point to another would keep the 
same general direction, determined by the larger obstacles in 
the way, but all would diverge more or less from the straight 
path on account of undergrowth, tree trunks, etc., and would 
meet with considerable difficulty in their progress. After 
some hundreds had passed, however, a tolerably beaten track 
would be marked out, along which travel was easy and all 
after-comers would take it. If instead of one entry and one 
exit we imagine thousands of each, and that the paths between 
certain have been often traveled, others less, and some hardly 
at all, we get a pretty good mental picture of what happens in 
the passage of nervous impulses through the gray matter of 
the cord; the clearing of the more trodden paths answering 
to the effects of use and practice. The human cord and that 
of the frog must not, however, be looked upon as pathless 
thickets at the commencement; each individual iniierits cer¬ 
tain paths of least resistance determined by the structure of 
fhe cord, which is the transmitted material result of the life 
experiences of a long line of ancestors. 

The Inhibition of Reflexes. Since it is possible, as by 
strychnine, to diminish the resistance in the gray matter, it 
is conceivably also possible to increase it, and diminish or 
prevent reflexes. Such is found to be actually the case. We 
can to a great extent control reflexes by the will; for example, 
the jerking of the muscles which tends to follow tickling: and 
it is found that after a frog’s brain is removed it is much 
easier to get reflex actions out of the spinal cord. Certain 
drugs, as bromide of potassium, also diminish reflex excit¬ 
ability. If a frog’s brain be removed and the animal’s toe be 
dipped into very dilute acid, it will be removed after a few 
seconds; the time elapsing between the immersion and the 
lifting of the foot is known as the reflex time; anything 
diminishing reflex excitability increases this, as the stimulus 
(which has a cumulative effect on the centre) has to act longer 
before it arouses the cord to the discharging point. If the 
sciatic nerve of the other leg be stimulated while the toe is in 
the acid the reflex time is increased, or the reflex may fail 
entirely to appear. This is one case of a general law, that 
any powerful stimulation of one sensory nerve tends to in¬ 
hibit orderly reflexes due to the excitation of another. A 



THE SPINAL CORD AND REFLEX ACTIONS. 607 


common example is the well-known trick of pinching the 
nose or upper lip to prevent a sneeeze. The whole question 
of rellex inhibition is at present very obscure. It may be due 
to the excitation of special fibres which inhibit reflex centres, 
as the fibres of the depressor nerve do the activity of the vaso¬ 
constrictor centre; or to the fact that one nerve impulse in 
the cord in some cases blocks or interferes with another; or 
partly to both. 

Psychical Activities of the Cord. Since we can get quite * 
marked reflex movements in the lower part of the Body of a , 
man whose cord is divided and who cannot voluntarily move 
his lower limbs, and on questioning him find that he feels 
nothing and is quite ignorant of his movements unless he sees 
his legs, it is most probable that the spinal cord in all cases is 
devoid of centres of consciousness and volition: this is not 
certain, however; for there might well be a less division of 
physiological labor between the cord and brain of a frog, than 
between those of a man. Still we are entitled to good evi¬ 
dence before we admit that things so similar as the human 
cord and that of the frog possesses different properties. Co¬ 
ordinated movements following a given stimulus, or cries 
emitted by an animal, will not suffice to prove that it is con¬ 
scious, since we know these may occur entirely unconsciously 
in men, who alone can tell us of their feelings. We must 
look for something that resembles actions only done by men 
consciously. In the frog it has been maintained that we have 
evidence of such. If a bit of acidulated paper be put on the 
thigh of a decapitated frog, the animal will bend its knee and 
use its leg to brush off the irritant; always using this same 
leg if the stimulus be not so strong as to produce disorderly 
reflexes. If now the foot be tied down so that the frog can¬ 
not raise it, after a few ineffectual efforts it will move the 
other leg, and may wipe the paper off with it. This it has 
been said shows a true psychical activity in the cord; a con¬ 
scious and voluntary employment of new procedures under 
unusual circumstances. But a close observation of the phe¬ 
nomenon shows that it will hardly bear this interpretation; 
the movements of the other leg are very irregular and inco¬ 
ordinate, and much resemble reflex convulsions stirred up by 
the prolonged action of the acid, which goes on stimulating 
the skin nerves more and more powerfully. Even if new 
muscles came, in an orderly way, into play under the stronger 




608 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


stimulus, that would not prove a volitional conscious use of 
them; we see quite similar phenomenon when there is nothing 
purpose-like in the movement. Many dogs reflexly kick vio¬ 
lently the hind leg of the same side when one flank is tickled. 
If this leg he held and the tickling continued, very frequently 
the opposite hind leg will take on the movements, which it- 
never does in ordinary circumstances. This is quite compar¬ 
able to the frog’s use of its other leg under the circumstances 
above described, but here it would be obviously absurd to talk 
of a volitional source for such a senseless movement. 

Reflex Time. This is the time elapsing between the stimu¬ 
lation of a sensory surface and the resulting reflex contraction 
of a muscle. It contains, of course, several elements—the 
time taken in the origination and afferent course of the nerve 
impulse, the time occupied in the centre, and that in the 
efferent nerve-fibres, and the period of latent excitement of 
the muscles. Since the rate of travel of nerve impulses and 
the time of latent excitement are known with tolerable ac¬ 
curacy they can be estimated; and their sum subtracted from 
the whole time gives the time taken up in the central organ. 
This, as might be expected, when we consider the highly 
complex nature of the processes required to produce a co¬ 
ordinated reflex movement, is very much greater than the 
time occupied in traversing an equal length of nerve trunk. 
An electric shock given to one eyelid causes a reflex wink of 
both, and by suitable apparatus the time lapsing between 
stimulation of one eyelid and movement of the other can be 
measured. It is about .0660 sec.; the calculated time for the 
passage of the afferent impulse to the centre in the gray matter 
of the fourth ventricle and of the efferent to the orbicularis- 
muscle of the other eyelid, or the period of latent excitation, 
is about .0160 sec., leaving .0500 sec. for the central processes. 
Reflex time varies considerably. It is longer for more com¬ 
plicated reflex movements; also the strength of the stimulus 
has an influence; if one toe of a decapitated frog be immersed 
in very dilute acid the time which elapses before it is with¬ 
drawn is greater than when the acid is a little stronger. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


The Functions of the Brain in General. The brain, at 

least in man and the higher animals, is the seat of conscious¬ 
ness and intelligence; these disappear when its blood-supply 
is cut oif, as in fainting; pressure on parts of it, as by a tumor 
or by an effusion of blood in apoplexy, has the same result; 
inflammation of it causes delirium; and when the cerebral 
hemispheres are unusually small idiotcy is observed. The 
brain has, however, many other important functions; it is the 
seat of many reflex, automatic, and co-ordinating centres, 
which can act as entirely apart from consciousness as those 
of the spinal cord. It is also traversed by many paths of con¬ 
duction, some uniting it with the spinal cord and numerous 
others putting its own parts in anatomical connection. 

The psychical activities, at least in man, seem to be depend¬ 
ent on the forebrain, the rest of the complex mass having 
other non-mental functions or at most being only concerned 
in very simple mental states. After the cerebral hemispheres 
have been removed from a frog it is still able to perform every 
movement as before, but it no longer performs any spontane¬ 
ously. Suitably stimulated it will leap, swim, crawl, climb, 
turn off its back to its normal position; and if the optic thalami 
have not been injured will in leaping forward avoid an ob¬ 
stacle placed between it and the light. Its whole essential 
mechanism of movement is clearly intact, and can be thrown 
into action and to a certain extent be guided by afferent 
nervous impulses. Quite similar phenomena may be observed 
in pigeons; they not only can stand, but walk, fly if thrown 
into the air, and preen their feathers, after removal of the 
cerebral hemispheres; and if carefully tended will live for 
months. Mammals bear badly extensive operations on the 
forebrain and usually die before fully recovering from the 
shock of the operation; but rats survive some hours, and 
then exhibit very similar phenomena. However it has been 

609 



610 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


possible by repeated operations, taking away only a part at 
a time, to successfully remove almost all the surface gray matter 
of the cerebral hemispheres from dogs; and the animals have 
recovered so as to perform many ordinary movements so well 
that a person observing them only for a short time would 
notice nothing abnormal. But in such cases not only some 
cerebral cortex has been left but also the deeper lying corpora, 
striata and optic thalami: when these gray masses and all 
the cerebral cortex are removed, as is possible in frogs and 
birds, the animal does not move unless directly stimulated,, 
or so rarely that movements which appear due to a spontane¬ 
ous volition are probably due to some unobserved irritation or 
stimulation. In addition to loss of willed movements there 
is loss or nearly complete loss of perception, that is, of the 
power of mentally interpreting and giving a meaning to in¬ 
coming nervous impulses. The pigeon or rat will start at a 
loud noise, but makes no attempt to escape, as if it conceived 
danger; it will follow a light with the eyes but make no at¬ 
tempt to escape from a hand stretched out to seize it; it can 
and does swallow food placed in its mouth, but will starve if 
left alone with plenty of it, the sight of edible things seeming 
to arouse no idea or conception. It has been doubted whether 
the animals have any true sensations; they start at sounds,, 
avoid opaque objects in their road, and cry when pinched; but 
all these may be unconscious reflex acts: on the whole it seems 
more probable, however, that they have sensations but not 
perceptions; they feel redness and blueness, hardness and soft¬ 
ness, and so on; but sensations, as already pointed out, tell 
in themselves nothing; they are but signs which have to bo 
mentally interpreted as indications of external objects or of 
conditions of the Body: it is this interpreting power which 
seems deficient in the animal deprived of its forebrain. In 
some cases a like state appears to occur in man in connection 
with abnormal states of parts of the cerebral hemispheres. 
The patient may have eye, retina, optic nerves and all the 
endings of these in the optic thalami and corpora quadrigemma 
intact, and his pupils react to light, and the eyes follow a 
bright object, yet the object arouses in the patient no idea as 
to its nature: apparently he sees it, but he is mind Hind. 

The Medulla Oblongata. Lying on the ventral aspect of 
this (Chap. XII) on the sides of the continuation of the anterior 
fissure of the cord are the two masses of nerve-fibres known 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


611 


as the anterior pyramids: most of the fibres of these are con¬ 
tinuations of the pyramidal tracts of the cord and here cross 
the middle line, forming thus the decussation of the pyramids. 
The fibres of the direct pyramidal tract pass on in the pyramid 
of the same side, only crossing in the cord. The pyramidal 
fibres pass on through the pons Yarolii and along the ventral 
or basal side of the crura cerebri (Fig. 176), and enter the 
cerebral hemispheres. In the medulla are a number of masses 
of gray matter (often named nuclei) which have the same- 
relation to the motor fibres of cranial nerves as areas of gray 
matter in the cord have to the motor fibres of the spinal roots, 
and from these motor nuclei medullated fibres join the pyr¬ 
amids and go with them into the forehrain. Such fibres of 
ascending degeneration in the cerebellar tract .of the cord and 
of the ascending antero-lateral tract as extend above the cord 
run on the dorsal side of the medulla oblongata as the resiiform 
bodies ; they diverge in front so as to lie on the sides of the 
fourth ventricle and enter the cerebellum. The fibres of the 
posterior median column terminate in a mass of gray matter 
in the medulla known as the nucleus gracilis: those of the 
exterior median column in a similar nucleus cuneatus. These 
nuclei in turn give origin to many fibres, a large number 
crossing the middle line, and some of these are then continued 
as the fillet along the dorsal side of the crus cerebri to the fore 
brain; others join the restiform body and through it the 
opposite side of the cerebellum: these crossings constitute 
the sensory decussation , as distinguished from the pyramidal 
or motor. The fibres of the antero-lateral descending tract 
which do not undergo descending degeneration probably join 
the pyramids; all their fibres entering the medulla from the 
cord end in gray matter* of the medulla. By the word “ end¬ 
ing ” is meant, of course, only that they cannot he further 
traced as individual fibres, not that no physiological represen¬ 
tatives of them arise in the gray matter of the medulla and 
pass to other parts of the brain. 

The central canal of the spinal cord passes (Chap. XII) 
into the medulla oblongata, in the anterior portion of which it 
expands to form the fourth ventricle. The gray matter of the 
cord is continued around the canal and on the floor and sides of 
the ventricle; and in connection with it are special thickenings, 
rich in nerve-cells forming the nuclei or deep origins of most 
of the cranial nerves: some of these nerves arise from more 



612 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


than one nucleus and some of the nuclei are separated from 
the gray matter around the central cavity, but a minute ana¬ 
tomical description would be here out of place. The olivary 
capsules , however, placed in the olivary bodies which lie on 
the outer side of each anterior pyramid may, however, be 
mentioned. The nerves having their nuclei in the medulla 
oblongata are the hypoglossal (xn), the spinal accessory (xi) 
except its spinal portion, the vagus (x), the glossopharyngeal 
(ix) (some fibres of which perhaps come from the cord), the 
auditory (yiii) (by two distinct bundles of fibres, cochlear 
and vestibular, connected with distinct nuclei), the facial 
(vn), the patheticus (yi), part of the trigeminal. Some of 
the trigeminal arises from gray matter in the corpora quad- 
rigemina. The nucleus of the abducens (iy) lies just under 
the floor of the aqueduct of Sylvius (Fig. 176), opposite the 
posterior border of the anterior corpora quadrigemina. The 
oculo-motor (in) arises from gray matter under the front 
of the aqueduct and from the posterior part of the third ven¬ 
tricle. All the fibres of the above ten nerves arise, then, 
from gray matter around the cerebral continuation of the gray 
matter of the cord, and most of them behind the midbrain. 

Besides its functions as affording paths between the cord 
and the rest of the brain and as the seat of many relay and 
junction centres the medulla has important reflex and auto¬ 
matic activities. As in the case of the cord, its motor centres 
may be thrown into reflex activity by afferent impulses from 
below, as well as by efferent travelling down from cerebrum 
or cerebellum. It is especially concerned with nervous con¬ 
trol of the organs more immediately connected with circu¬ 
lation, respiration, and mastication. The physiological action 
of most of the medullary centres has already been described; 
the more important are—1. The respiratory centre. 2. The 
cardio-inhibitory centre; the centre of the accelerator heart- 
fibres lies in the medulla. 3. The vaso-motor centres. 4. 
The centre for the dilator muscle-fibres of the pupil. 5. 
The centre for the muscles of chewing and swallowing, which 
are commonly thrown into action reflexly, though they may 
be made to contract voluntarily. 6. The convulsive centre. 
7. The diabetic centre. 8. The centre reflexly exciting activ¬ 
ity in the salivary glands,, when sensory nerves in the mouth 
are stimulated. 9. Certain centres for complex bodily move¬ 
ments; an animal with its medulla oblongata can execute 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 613 

much more complicated reflex acts than one with its spinal 
cord alone. 

The Cerebellum and Pons Varolii. (Figs. 74, 75). The 
anterior part of the medulla oblongata is covered above by 
the cerebellum and below by the pons, the latter of which is 
mainly a transverse commissure uniting the hemispheres of 
the cerebellum, though the pyramidal and other longitudinal 
commissural fibres run through it; and in it are many gray 
nuclei. The halves of the cerebellum are also united with 
one another by transverse fibres of its middle lobe; and, be¬ 
hind, by the posterior peduncles with the restiform bodies 
and the medulla, and, in front, by the anterior peduncles , 
with the cerebrum. Besides its gray surface with small nerve- 
cells and the cells of Purkinje (Fig. 82) it contains other 
more central gray matter. The most striking anatomical fact 
in relation to the cerebellum is its close connection with the 
afferent tracts of the spinal cord, nearly all of which except 
the fibres of the fillet are only connected with the cerebrum 
through the intervention of the cerebellum. The same is true 
of the vestibular portion of the auditory nerve and probably 
also of most of the afferent fibres of all the posterior cranial 
nerves. The cerebellum is thus subjected to influences from 
many regions of the Body; the skin, the muscles, the ears, and 
probably also the eyes are sources of impulses streaming into 
it all the time, and modifying the conditions of its gray matter 
and the nature of the impulses in turn issued from that. The 
most marked result of extensive injury of the cerebellum is 
muscular inco-ordination; it seems to be a chief organ of what 
we may call personally acquired reflexes, as distinguished from 
inherited. 

Every one has to learn to stand, walk, run, and so on; at 
first all are difficult, but after a time become easy and are 
performed unconsciously. In standing or walking very many 
muscles are concerned, and if the mind had all the time to 
look directly after them we could do nothing else at the same 
time; we have forgotten how we learnt to walk, but in ac¬ 
quiring a new mode of progression in later years, as skating, 
we find that at first it needs all our attention, but when once 
learnt we have only to start the series of movements and they 
are almost unconsciously carried on for us. At first we had 
to learn to contract certain muscle groups when we got par¬ 
ticular sensations, either tactile, from the soles, or muscular, 


614 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


from the general position of the limbs, or visual, or others 
(equilibrium sensations, see below) from the semicircular 
canals. But the oftener a given group of sensations has been 
followed by a given muscular contraction the more close be¬ 
comes the association of the two; the path of connection be¬ 
tween the afferent and efferent fibres becomes easier the more 
it is travelled, and at last the afferent impulses arouse the 
proper movement without volitional interference at all, and 
while hardly exciting any consciousness; we can then walk or 
skate without thinking about it. The will, which had at first 
to excite the proper muscular nerve-centres in accordance with 
the felt directing sensations, now has no more trouble in the 
matter; the afferent impulses stimulate the proper motor 
centres in an unconscious and unheeded way. Injury or dis¬ 
ease of the cerebellum produces great disturbances of locomo¬ 
tion and insecurity in maintaining various postures. After a 
time the animals (birds, which hear the operation best) can 
walk again, and fly, but they soon become fatigued, probably 
because the movements require close mental attention and 
direction all the time. 

Sensations of Equilibrium. In order to make proper 
movements of balancing or locomotion we need a knowledge 
of the space relations of the Body to its surroundings. When 
eyes, muscles, and skin send in concordant afferent impulses, 
movements are precise; if sensations of any one of these groups 
are wanting (excluding blind persons who have learned to do 
without some of them) or abnormal the whole mechanism is 
thrown out of gear. Persons who have lost muscular or tactile 
sensibility stand and walk with difficulty; those who have 
nystagmus (jerking unconscious movements of the eyeballs 
which cause the visual field to seem to move in space) do the 
same and feel giddy; and, if a person be rapidly rotated with 
his eyes open he soon becomes giddy; the succession of retinal 
images suggests that he is moving in space, but the muscular 
and tactile afferent impulses are in conflict with that; and 
though this discordance hardly comes into direct consciousness 
as a definite contradiction between sensations, the want of 
harmony in the afferent impulses throws co-ordinating motor 
mechanisms out of gear, with resulting uncertainty in loco¬ 
motion. An important group of afferent impulses concerned 
with the maintenance of bodily equilibrium in addition to 
those above referred to is probably derived through the semi- 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


615 


circular canals of the ear, which are supplied by the vestibular 
portion of the auditory nerve; and it has, as we have seen, a 
special cerebellar connection. An old view was that, lying 
in three planes at right angles to one another, they served to 
distinguish the direction of sound-waves reaching the ear; but 
as the direction of oscillation of the tympanic ossicles is the 
same, no matter what that of the sound-waves entering the 
external auditory meatus may be, such an hypothesis has no 
foundation. The cochlea sufficiently accounts for the appre¬ 
ciation of notes, and such noises as are due to inharmonically 
combined tones; while the sacculus will suffice for other 
noises: and it is found that disease of the semicircular canals 
does not interfere with hearing, but often causes uncertainty 
of movements and feelings of giddiness. 

Experiment shows that cutting a semicircular canal is fol¬ 
lowed by violent movements of the head in the plane of the 
canal divided; the animal staggers, also, if made to walk; 
and, if a pigeon and thrown into the air, cannot fly. All its 
muscles can contract as before, but they are no longer so co¬ 
ordinated as to enable the animal to maintain or regain a 
position of equilibrium. It is like a creature suffering from 
giddiness; and similar phenomena follow, in man, electrical 
stimulation of the regions of the skull in which the semicir¬ 
cular canals lie. 

If, moreover, a person lie perfectly quiet with closed eyes 
on a table which can be rotated, he is able to tell when the 
table is turned and in which direction, and often with con¬ 
siderable accuracy through what angle. If the rotation be 
continued for a time the feeling of it is lost, and then when 
the movement ceases there is a sense of rotation in the oppo¬ 
site direction. In such case neither tactile, muscular, nor 
visual sensations can help, and in the semicircular canals we 
seem to 1 have a mechanism through which rotation of the head 
could give origin to afferent impulses, whether the head be 
passively moved with, the rest of the Body or independently 
by its own muscles. Movements of endolymph in relation 
to the walls of the canals may act as stimuli by causing a 
swaying of the projecting hairs of the ampullae (Fig. 167). 
Place a few small bits of cork in a tumbler of water, and rotate 
the tumbler; at first the water does not move with it; then it 
begins to go in the same direction, but more slowly; and, 
finally, moves at the same angular velocity as the tumbler. 


616 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Then stop the tumbler, and the water will go on rotating for 
some tipe. Now if the head be turned or rotated in a hori¬ 
zontal plane similar phenomena will occur in the endolymph 
of the horizontal canal; if it be bent sidewise in the vertical 
plane, in the anterior vertical canal; and if nodded, in the 
posterior vertical; the hairs moving with the canal would 
meet the more stationary water and be pushed and so, possibly, 
excite the nerves at the deep ends of the cells which bear 
them, and generate afferent impulses which will cause the 
general nerve-centres of bodily equilibration to be differently 
acted upon in each case. Under ordinary circumstances the 
results of these impulses do not become prominent in con¬ 
sciousness as definite sensations; but they are probably always 
present. If one spins round for a time, the endolymph takes 
up the movement of the canals, as the water in the tumbler 
does that of the glass; on stopping, the liquid still goes on 
moving and stimulates the hairs which are now stationary; 
and we feel giddy, from the ears telling us we are rotating 
and the eyes that we are not; hence difficulty in standing 
erect or walking straight. A common trick illustrates this 
very well: make a person place his forehead on the handle 
of an umbrella, the other end of which is on the floor, and 
then walk three or four times round it, rise, and try to go out 
of a door; he will nearly always fail, being unable to combine 
his muscles properly on account of the conflicting afferent 
impulses. This and the feeling of rotation in the contrary 
direction when a previous rotation ceases become readily intel¬ 
ligible if we suppose feelings to be excited by relative move¬ 
ments of the endolymph and the canals inclosing it. 

The Midbrain. The general arrangement of these parts 
has been already described (Fig. 82). Cross-sections show 
(Fig. 176) the aqueduct of Sylvius, S, traversing the mid¬ 
brain near its upper part and surrounded by a thin layer of 
gray matter, in close connection with which are the origins 
of the third and fourth cranial nerves, iy, and of part of the 
fifth. The crura cerebri form the main mass of the midbrain. 
Each is divided by gray matter (locus niger , Ln) into a ven¬ 
tral portion {pes or crusta , P ), which forms the semicylin- 
drical portion of the crus seen on the base of the brain and a 
dorsal portion, the tegmentum, Tg. The pes consists mainly 
of the fibres of the pyramidal tract, Py , but some fibres of the 
fillet, /, also run forward in it, as do fibres, fr and oc, connecting 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


617 


it with the frontal and occipital lobes of the cerebral hemisphere. 
The tegmentum contains gray masses and many transverse 
and longitudinal fibres. Many of the fibres, cp , come from the 
anterior peduncle of the cerebellum; these cross in the pos¬ 
terior part of the tegmentum; most of them end in a large 
mass of gray matter in the front of the tegmentum named the 
red nucleus ; others run forward to the optic thalamus direct. 
Other longitudinal fibres are continued from the fillet some of 



Fig. 176 . —Diagram of cross-section of midbrain in region of posterior corpora 
quadrigemina : P. pes ; Ln, locus niger; Tg . tegmentum; .9, aqueduct of Sylvius; 
cq, l ight corpus quadrigeminum. In the pes on lrft, side are indicated by fr, fibres 
from frontal lobe of cerebral hemisphere; /, fibres of fillet; py, fibres of pyramidal 
tract; oc, fibres from occipital lobe of cerebral hemisphere. In tegmental region, 
/', fillet fibres to anterior corpus quadrigeminum; fillet fibres for posterior 
corpus quad rigeminum; cp. fibres from cerebellar peduncle. Parts containing gray 
nerve matter are shaded in horizontal lines. 

these,/", end in the posterior corpora quadrigemina; others, 
/', in the superior corpora quadrigemina and the occipital re¬ 
gion of the cerebral hemispheres. The corpora quadrigemina' 
are covered by a layer of medullated fibres, but their main 
mass is gray matter. The anterior pair are closely connected 
with the optic tracts, and therefore with the optic nerves and 
the retinas: to their outer sides and in front are the external 
corpora geniculata , gray masses closely associated with the 
optic tracts. 

The structure of the midbrain shows that it is in great part 
merely a commissure between the parts in front of and behind 
it: but its connection with fibres of the optic tract shows 
that it has a close relation to visual sensations; and the origin 
in it of the oculo-motor and abducens nerves, that from it the 
eye muscles, and the iris and ciliary muscle are innervated. 


618 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The Brain Regions in Front of the Midbrain. It would 

be quite a hopeless task to attempt in a few pages any detailed 
account of the topography of these, but in addition to the 
facts already stated a few points of special physiological signifi¬ 
cance may be indicated. These portions of the brain may 
be in general described as consisting of three masses of gray 
matter on each side; optic thalamus, corpus striatum, cerebral 



Fig. 177.—Diagram to illustrate cerebral distribution of fibres proceeding from 
the pes of the crus cerebri. For description see text. 

cortex. They are united in manifold ways by the transverse, 
longitudinal, and oblique fibres of the white substance of the 
cerebral hemisphere. Their more fundamental relations to 
the midbrain and to one another are shown in a very sim¬ 
plified and diagrammatic manner in Figs. 177 and 178. The 
iter , or aqueduct of Sylvius, i, is seen passing into the pos¬ 
terior end of the third ventricle, 3, which is separated by 
only a very thin layer of white matter from the large ovoid 
gray mass ot , which is the optic thalamus. Connected by the 














THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


619 


foramen of Monro, /if, with the third ventricle is the left 
lateral ventricle, 2, bounded on the inner side by the thin 
septum lucidum. Between the septa lucida is the fifth ven¬ 
tricle, 5. The gray mass, JVc, to the side of the lateral ven¬ 
tricle is the caudate nucleus and the mass Ln the lenticular 
nucleus of the corpus striatum. In front and at a level dif- 
erent from that of the diagram the two are continuous. 

The band of white fibres, ic , lying here between the 
lenticular nucleus on the outer side and the caudate nucleus 
and optic thalamus on the inner side is the internal capsule: 
ec is the external capsule. FI is the cortical gray matter of 
the frontal lobe of the cerebrum; PZ, of the parietal lobe; 
Oc.l. of the occipital lobe: Ro, the fissure of Rolando; Po, the 
parieto-occipital fissure. The course of many fibres in the 
forebrain is still uncertain, but some important paths have 
been traced by anatomical and microscopic work, and still 
more by following tracts of degeneration resulting from cer¬ 
tain lesions, as in the case of the spinal cord; and also by 
noticing the results of stimulation or removal of definite areas. 

Taking first the pes of the crus cerebri (Fig. 176), which 
consists entirely of longitudinal fibres, we find that the py¬ 
ramidal tract, py , Fig. 177, is continued through the internal 
capsule and radiates beyond it, to end in the cortex of the 
frontal and parietal lobes in the region of the fissure of Rolando. 
These fibres are all efferent and degenerate to their endings in 
the gray matter of the cord or the motor nuclei of cranial nerves 
when the cortex in the Rolandic region is removed. A second 
collection of fibres in the pes is the frontal, and its fibres, /r, 
can be traced to the frontal region of the cortex; when that 
is removed the fibres degenerate as far as the gray matter of 
the pons, from which they are probably connected by other 
fibres with the opposite side of the cerebellum. A third set 
of fibres in the pes is the temporo-occipital, oc : they also pass 
through the internal capsule to the corresponding region of 
the cortex: they can be traced as far as the gray matter of 
the pons, and appear to be fibres of descending degeneration. 
Another set of fibres, ca, of descending degeneration in the 
internal capsule has no immediate connection with the cortex: 
it arises in the caudate nucleus; the course of the fibres be¬ 
yond the pons is not known. The lenticular nucleus also 
gives off fibres, g, to the internal capsule, which probably con¬ 
nect the corpus striatum through the pes with the pons and 


620 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


medulla oblongata, but they are so mingled with other fibres 
that they have not been satisfactorily traced. 

Passing now to the tegmentum, it is first to be borne in 
mind that many fibres (including most of those of the anterior 
cerebellar peduncle) entering it from behind, end in the large 
red nucleus lying in its anterior portion and in its other gray 
masses. From these (Fig. 178) numerous fibres, rn , pass to 
the optic thalamus: so that the majority of the tegmental 
fibres differ from the pedal in that they only have indirect 
connection with the cortex through the thalamal and other 
gray matter. The thalamus is united with nearly all regions 
of the cortex by fibres, af, passing from its outer side into 
the internal capsule, and distributed in special abundance to 
the occipital lobe. Since the thalamus receives fibres through 
the tegmentum from the anterior quadrigemina and the 
lateral geniculata (which we have seen to have close connec¬ 
tion with the optic nerves), and there is independent reason 
for believing parts of the occipital lobe to be closely associated 
with visual perceptions, the close anatomical association of 
that lobe with the thalamus is significant. Another group of 
fibres, t?, connects the thalamus with the temporal and occip¬ 
ital cortex, but does not take its path through the internal 
capsule. Some fibres of the tegmentum reach the cortex 
without primary connection with the thalamus: of these is a 
set, e , which passes through the lenticular nucleus (but with¬ 
out any communication with its gray substance) on its way 
to the frontal and parietal lobes. At ce is indicated a set of 
fibres of the tegmentum which there is some reason to believe 
run to the fore part of the cortex direct, having no connection 
with the thalamus and passing ventral to the internal capsule. 

Most of the fibres of the fillet, we have seen, end. in the 
red nucleus or corpora quadrigemina: fibres arising in these 
gray masses connect them with the thalamus and through it 
with the cortex. 

Besides fibres connecting the cortex with other parts are 
many which unite different cortical areas directly. A vast 
number (Oh, Fig. 177) cross the middle line in the corpus 
callosum and are believed to join corresponding parts of the 
two hemispheres. Others pass over in the small white an¬ 
terior commissure and unite the two olfactory lobes and 
portions of the temporal lobes. The posterior commissure 
unites mainly the optic thalami and the front ends of the 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


621 


tegmenta. The soft commissure is mainly gray matter. 
Finally a large number of associational fibres, as, unite 
different parts of the cortical substance of the same hemi¬ 
sphere. 

The different gray masses on the same side of the forebrain 
are also united by fibres. They are either so scattered among 
others that they cannot be tracked out along special tracts of 
degeneration; or, as is possible, resemble some of the com- 



Fig 178.—Diagram to illustrate cerebral distribution of the fibres proceeding 
from the tegmentum. For description see text. 

missural fibres uniting upper and lower regions of gray matter 
in the spinal cord in having nutritive centres at each end, 
and therefore not degenerating on either side of a section. In 
any case very little is known as to their numbers or paths: 
their existence is indicated by the dotted lines in Figs. 177, 
178. 

Omitting the associational and the cross commissure fibres 
and those uniting the corpora striata and optic thalami, 





















622 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


it may be said in general that the systems of fibres represented 
in Fig. 177 are all almost certainly concerned in cony eying 
impulses from the cortex, and those in Fig. 178 in the trans¬ 
mission of afferent impulses. It will be noted that both affer¬ 
ent and efferent fibres are abundant in the internal capsule; 
and that the corpus striatum and pes are more especially con¬ 
nected with efferent and the tegmentum and thalamus with 
afferent impulses. It can hardly be necessary to add that 
each line in the diagrams represents hundreds of thousands 
of nerve-fibres. 

The Functions of the Cerebral Cortex. That this part of 
the nervous system is in close association with the intellect and 
with the initiation of voluntary movements seems beyond 
doubt: but it may have other functions quite apart from any 
states of consciousness; and intelligence and every volition may 
not entirely depend on it. The experiments made in recent 
years on the lower animals tend to the conclusion that some 
will and some intellect may remain in animals all or almost all 
of whose gray cerebral surfaces have been removed; the more 
complete loss of those powers described by earlier workers 
being due to the fact that the animals were not kept alive long 
enough after the operation. It has been observed that a dog 
whose cerebral cortex (as verified by subsequent post-mortem 
examination) had been nearly completely removed did learn 
after some months to walk about to all appearance voluntarily, 
and to find and eat his food; he even learned not to take the 
food of other dogs after he had been severely bitten several 
times for so doing. But more complex perceptions were lost: 
before the operation, for example, he was greatly terrified by 
seeing a man fantastically dressed, but afterwards no such 
appearance aroused in him so complex a conception as that of 
a strange or dangerous object. He also never recovered the 
trick of “giving paw,” which had previously been taught 
him. But on the whole a person casually observing him would 
not have thought him very different from any other dog, ex¬ 
cept perhaps that he was rather stupid: put into a low open 
box, for example, he would not jump out of it when called, 
though he easily could do so and clearly desired to. Such 
simple and fundamental perceptions and volitions as remained 
in this and some similar cases probably have their seats in the 
optic thalami and corpora striata, and indeed embryology shows 
that the corpora striatum is morphologically a part of the 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


623 


cerebral cortex: it is therefore probable that in man some of 
the lower and simpler mental faculties are associated also with 
those parts. There are, however, great and obvious chances 
of error in arguing from the actions of the lower animals as to 
their mental state: and these are increased by the compara¬ 
tively small proportion the cerebral cortex bears to the whole 
cerebro-spinal centre in these animals when compared with its 
ratio in man, showing its less importance in the management 
of their actions. Hence the most useful observations are 
those made of late years on apes and monkeys and on men 
suffering from local brain disease. By utilizing these it has 
been possible to map out certain areas of the brain surface 
as having special, though possibly not absolutely unshared 
association, with volitional movement and with groups of 
sensations and sensory interpretations. In addition to facts 
obtained by removal or local disease of parts of the brain we 
have others obtained by electrical stimulation of certain 
parts of the cortex, which although quite insensible to cut¬ 
ting or mechanical irritation does in some places respond to 
application of the interrupted or constant electric current. 
The more important results obtained are indicated in a 
general way in Figs. 179 and 180, representing respectively the 
outer and inner surfaces of the right cerebral hemisphere; 
these diagrams should be compared with the more detailed 
figures in Chapter XI. 

The shaded area beginning on the top of the brain and 
extending down the sides of the fissure of Rolando or central 
fissure, Ro, and beyond its ventral end is the motor area of 
the cortex. It also extends to the inner side of the hemi¬ 
sphere, as shown in Fig. 179. Electric stimulation of dif¬ 
ferent parts of this area causes movements of leg, arm, or 
face as indicated. Removal of the region marked “ arm ” in 
the monkey causes motor paralysis and some loss of sensi¬ 
bility in the arm on the opposite side of the body. It is 
also followed by degenerations extending from the re¬ 
moved region of cortex through the internal capsule to 
some pyramidal fibres in the pes and thence back through 
the pyramids to the crossed pyramidal and direct pyram¬ 
idal tracts in the cord as far as the cervical enlarge¬ 
ment. Localized disease of this area in man is followed 
by paralysis of voluntary movements of the opposite arm 
and by similar degenerations. Similar statements are true 


624 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


for the areas marked leg, foot, and face, except that the re¬ 
sulting degeneration would extend in the one case to the 
lumbar enlargement of the cord, in the other to the nucleus 
of the vii nerve in the medulla. Moreover, each of these 
areas can be mapped out into smaller ones, giving origin 
to a more limited movement when stimulated and a more 
limited paralysis and tract of degeneration when removed. 
Thus areas especially associated with the eyelids, with the 
muscles of the angle of the mouth, with the flexor muscles of 



Fig. 179.—Diagram of outer surface of left cerebral hemisphere to illustrate the 
localization of functions. The motor area is shaded in vertical and transverse 
lines: Sy , fissure of Sylvius; an , angular gyrus or convolution; Ro, fissure of 
Rolando; Fv, frontal lobe; Pa, parietal lobe; Te, temporal lobe. Only a very few 
of the more important fissures are indicated. Compare with Fig. 180. 

the wrist, all have their definite places in the general face or 
arm region. So definite are the positions of these areas that 
in cases of localized paralysis, diagnosed as due to lesions of 
the cerebral cortex, surgeons now have no hesitation in open¬ 
ing the skull in order if possible to remove the cause of 
trouble, as a small tumor: they know precisely in what spot 
they will find it. Although the localization is therefore 
tolerably precise, yet the limits of neighboring areas are not 
as sharp cut as the boundaries of neighboring countries on a 
map: as shown in Fig. 179, the arm area in its lower part 
overlaps part of the face area; and the minor areas within 
the main ones also overlap one another at their margins. 

The general interpretation put upon the above facts, and 
one which seems justified, is that in making definitely willed 












THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


625 


movements the cortical area connected through the pyram¬ 
idal tract with the muscles concerned is the place from 
which efferent impulses start throwing into action lower 
centres which more immediately co-ordinate the muscles: 
these lower centres in midbrain, cerebellum, medulla or cord 
may of course be thrown into reflex action by afferent im¬ 
pulses having no connection with the cortex, and to the eye 
the resulting movement would be exactly the same as a 
willed one. In another person, and still more in a dog or 
monkey, we must often be in doubt whether an action is or 
is not intentional; and as already pointed out, many move¬ 
ments of our own which were at one time even painfully in¬ 
tentional become quite unconscious after practice and are 
carried out by lower centres. It is also to be borne in mind 
that the cortical area from which the efferent processes of a 
willed movement make their start is in connection by as- 
sociational and other commissural fibres with many other 
regions of the cortex, and with fibres from the optic thalamus 
which may bring nerve impulses exciting it, and it is also in 
connection with the whole gray cortical network, so that the 
brain antecedents or excitants leading to a given movement, 
either alone or in combination with others, may be very 
different, and may be associated or not with concomitant 
sensations or emotions. 

Take such a movement as clenching the fist. On a corpse 
this might be brought about by pulling on the flexor tendons 
of the digits, but in an imperfect way; or, again in a very 
imperfect manner by stimulation of the motor nerves of the 
flexor muscles in the arm of a living person. If, however, we 
knew exactly the proper sensory fibres in spinal nerve-roots 
to stimulate and could thus act on the centre co-ordinating 
the proper muscles, there is no doubt we could bring about 
reflexly, and apart from all consciousness, a quite normal 
clenching movement. Next suppose a person struggling for 
breath: as his extraordinary muscles of respiration come into 
play his fists are clenched; here impulses from the medulla 
oblongata travel down the cord and throw the “clenching” 
spinal centre into activity along with many other muscles, 
and co-ordinating them all so as to give as good a pull as pos¬ 
sible to all muscles which can help an inspiration. In a 
higher but still not volitional stage, more groups of muscles 
are concerned, and centres of co-ordination in the pons and 


626 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


cerebellum come into action also; take a man preparing for a 
high jump: as he crouches and puts himself in balance for 
the spring he clenches his fists, quite unconsciously of course. 
Here the immediate clenching centre is thrown into activity 
along with the muscles of breathing, and of all parts of the 
trunk and limbs. Each subsidiary peripheral centre plays its 
part and the instreaming afferent impulses from the skin of the 
feet, from the fibres of the muscular sense, from the semicir¬ 
cular canals, from the eyes, are all concerned (without the 
person’s perception of them) in throwing the motor mechanisms 
of mid brain, cerebellum, medulla, and cord into harmonious 
activity, so that when the jump is actually willed it shall be 
accomplished. But that in this case the volition plays a very 
secondary part is obvious; it merely acts on an apparatus all 
ready to discharge in a given way when a suitable additional 
nerve impulse reaches it. A runner all tense for the start of 
a hundred-yard race can hardly be said to start voluntarily 
when he hears the signal; the case is comparable more to the 
self-balancing of a pigeon deprived of its cerebral hemi¬ 
spheres, when its perch is tilted. Next, suppose I clench my 
fist “ involuntarily,” as we commonly say, when I see some¬ 
thing that arouses my indignation; here clearly a mental 
element is in play, but not a volitional one, and so far as 
the movement is concerned probably the motor area of the 
cortex has little or nothing to do with it: it is more in accord 
with what is seen on animals to suppose that such simple 
emotions and their characteristic movements may be carried 
out by nerve apparatuses lying no higher than the thalami 
and corpora striata. If, however, I strike a man with the 
intention to punish him, there can be little doubt that the 
“ clenching” centre is excited by fibres from the cortex and 
passing down in the pyramidal tract. But this cortical area 
may in turn be thrown into activity and may have its ten¬ 
dency to discharge modified in many ways. My anger may 
be the culminating result of many long past received and 
interpreted and remembered sensations, and whether I shall 
give the blow or restrain myself also be dependent on many 
antecedents of experience. Again, I clench my hand to 
knock down a madman, as the only immediate method of 
preventing him from committing a murder: here tho same 
motor cortical area no doubt would be thrown in action as 
when the blow was struck in anger, but it is clear that the 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


6/7 


antecedent nerve processes arousing its activity would be 
quite different in the two cases; and they would yet again be 
different if I clenched the fist in order to explain to a child 
the meaning of the word clench. We see then that the im¬ 
mediate motor centres may be excited in various ways and in 
various combinations quite apart from the cortex of the cere¬ 
brum and by fibres not connected with the pyramidal tracts; 
and that when excited from the cortical area of the cere¬ 
brum through fibres of the pyramidal tract, that area itself 
may be excited or controlled in its activity by a vast number 
of other parts of the cortex, and by non-cortical parts of the 
nervous system. The motor area cannot properly be spoken 
of as the seat of volition: an act of willing is the final out¬ 
come of changes in other and often numerous other regions 
of the cortex, the resultant of whose material processes is a 
discharge of efferent impulses from some region of the motor 
area. 

The permanent effects of local lesions of the Rolandic 
region differ with the development of the brain. In dogs 
removal of the left brain region connected with the fore 
paw causes only temporary motor paralysis of the limb on 
the other side; after a time the animal learns to walk again 
as well as before; then removal of the corresponding area on 
the right side of the brain is followed by paralysis of both fore 
limbs. This has been supposed to show that the centre on 
the right side had taken up the duty of control for both sides 
after that on the left had been removed. However that may 
be, the second paralysis is also only temporary, disappearing 
in some weeks or months; and as has been already stated, 
even after removal of all the motor area the animal occasion¬ 
ally learns in the course of time to walk nearly as well as 
ever. This must be due to lower centres (corpora striata?), 
and the question is whether the movements in such cases are 
truly volitional, for definite acts of willing a movement prob¬ 
ably play a very small.part in a dog’s life: most of its move¬ 
ments are the immediate efferent expression of afferent im¬ 
pulses and true volitions have but a small part in them. In 
the lower monkeys definite motor effects of removal of part 
of the cortical motor area are also temporary, but last longer 
than in dogs; and in the anthropoid apes the same is the case 
in a greater degree, and according to some experimenters 
certain delicate combined movements are permanently lost 


628 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


after destruction of the motor area. These facts are correl¬ 
ated with the relatively larger size of the cortical motor area 
and of the pyramidal tracts in monkeys as compared with dogs, 
and the anthropoid apes as compared with other monkeys. 
The larger and more highly organized the brain area the 
greater the part it plays in the life-work of the animal and 
more noticeable are the results of its absence. In man local 
paralysis due to local cortical lesion is often only temporary: 
this may be due to disappearance of the disease; or to the 
primary paralysis being only a “ shock ” effect, and not due to 
actual disease of the motor centre, for it is well known that 
in animals injury to one region of the brain will often for a 
considerable time inhibit the activity of other parts: or it may 
be due to the hemisphere of the opposite side assuming con¬ 
trol. Different observers attribute very various values to these 
three possible factors. In this connection reference may he 
made to cases of what is called aphasia, which in its fully de¬ 
veloped state is a loss of the power to apply words to express 
ideas. The power of speech may, of course, be lost through 
disease of the larynx or paralysis of the nerves or muscles of the 
voice organs, but such a condition is not true aphasia: the 
aphasic person can often articulate perfectly well, but he can¬ 
not attach a meaning to his spoken word: in some cases he 
can write words with meaning, though he cannot say them; in 
other cases (agraphia) the power of using written words to 
express ideas is also lost, though the person can write, and his 
general conduct shows that he is still guided by his intelli¬ 
gence; he knows quite well what he wants to say, but he can¬ 
not set the proper motor apparatus in action to utter the 
word: if he speaks, the word has no connection with that in 
his mind, and as soon as he hears himself speaking it he often 
knows that the word he uses is quite wrong. We find in such 
cases the power to understand words, and to form ideas of 
words, and to utter words, but some link between the origin 
of the idea and the discharge of the motor impulses willed to 
express it is out of gear. It is as if an injured reflex centre 
should give a wrong or inco-ordinate efferent response to an 
afferent impulse. Aphasia is almost invariably connected 
with disease of the area marked SP in Fig. 179 and known 
as the third or lower frontal convolution, and the pathological 
change is on the left side of the brain only. The area, as will 
be seen, is closely associated with the face area and the tongue 


THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


629 


and partly overlaps them, or rather is intermixed with them; as 
pointed out above, the lesion is not one of motor speech cen¬ 
tres, but of the connection between these and other cerebral 
areas in which have occurred changes accompanied by the 
desire of verbal expression; something wrong probably in the 
gray network. Very rarely aphasia has been known to follow 
disease or injury of the corresponding convolution on the 
right side; so that in it we have an example of a very definite 
nexus between a limited area of the cortex and the expres¬ 
sion of will through movements. Cases of recovery from 
aphasia have occurred, but are extremely rare. In the ex¬ 
ceptional cases it has been supposed that the right side of the 
brain takes up the duty of connecting the material changes 
in the gray network which accompany the origination of an 
idea in one or more cortical areas, with the other changes 
which result in speech. This view gains some support from 
the fact that in certain cases of recovery due to left-side dis¬ 
ease, subsequent disease in the third right frontal convolution 
has been followed by a fresh aphasia. But however that may 
be we have in aphasic persons definite evidence of the limita¬ 
tion of definite function to a very limited area or areas of 
the cerebral cortex. 

Much less is known as to other regions of the cortex than 
of the motor area: most of them do not respond to electrical 
stimulation at all, and those areas that do, only show it by 
movements lacking in precision. We are reduced, therefore, 
to observation on animals from whom certain cortical parts 
have been removed, and to observations on diseased persons. 
Certain broad regions have in this way been mapped out as 
connected with certain main groups of sensations (Figs. 179, 
180), probably rather with the combining and interpreting 
of sensations, with their ideation , than with the mere raw 
sensation itself. The latter is probably more dependent on 
the lower brain centres; in most cases it is secondary changes 
in these which lead to impulses which are passed on to excite 
the cortical sensory areas. 

There is considerable evidence that removal or extensive 
injury of the left occipital lobe causes blindness of the left 
half of each retina, and vice versa. Also, that stimulation of 
this region of the brain may cause movements of the eyes 
and eyelids which have been described as such as an animal 
would make if it thought it saw something, though obviously 


630 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


that must be a very uncertain deduction. Also, the optic 
tract of each side has through the anterior corpus quadri- 
eeminum and some other gray masses a close connection with 
the cortex of the occipital lobe. Probably, therefore, that 
reo-ion has some close connection with vision. I here is also 
some evidence that the angular gyrus (< an , Fig. 179) has con¬ 
nection with sight. . , 

The sense of smell has been supposed especially connected 
with the uncinate gyrus of median side of the temporal lobe 
(un, Fig. 180), and the sense of taste with a neighboring 



Fig. 180.—Diagram of inner surface of left cerebral hemisphere to illustrate 
cerebral localization. Sq, fissure of Sylvius: Rn, fissure of Rolando; Fr , frontal 
lobe; Oc, occipital lobe: Te, temporal lobe; C.cl, corpus callosum; III , third ven¬ 
tricle. Compare with Fig. 179. 

area, but the evidence is unsatisfactory; and the same may be 
said of the reasons which led to designation of the region of 
the temporal lobe close behind the fissure of Sylvius with 
hearing. The region marked on the diagram as that of 
cutaneous sensations has also a doubtful claim: there is some 
reason to believe that the motor area of the cortex has con¬ 
nection with the muscular sense; also to some extent with 
tactile feelings. 

Tactile and temperature impulses cross the middle line 
somewhere on their path from the skin to the brain. An 
apoplectic effusion in one cerebral hemisphere causes loss of 
sensation and of voluntary movement on the other side of 
the Body. 

The frontal lobes are quite irresponsive to excitation, and 
considerable parts of them have been removed without ap- 







THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN. 


631 


parent diminution of motor or sensory faculty. By a sort of 
process of exclusion, the rest of the cortex being allotted 
(though on unsatisfactory evidence) to motion and sensation 
the frontal regions have been supposed to have special con¬ 
nection with the higher intellectual faculties. 

Mental Habits. Movements which are commonly exe¬ 
cuted together tend to become so associated that it is difficult 
to perform one alone; many persons, e.g., cannot close one 
eye and keep the other open. From frequent use, the paths 
of conduction between the co-ordinating centres for both 
groups of muscles have become so easy that a volitional im¬ 
pulse reaching one centre spreads to the other and excites 
both. This association of movements, dependent on the 
modification of brain structure by use, finds an interesting 
parallel in the psychological phenomenon known as the asso¬ 
ciation of ideas; and all education is largely based on the 
fact that the more often brain regions have acted together 
the more readily, until finally almost indissolubly, do they so 
act. If we always train up the child to associate feelings of 
disgust with wrong actions and of-approbation with right, 
when he is old he will find it very hard to do otherwise: such 
an organic nexus will have been established that the activity 
of the one set of centres will lead to an excitation of that 
which habit has always associated with it. The higher nerve- 
centres are throughout eminently plastic; it is that which 
marks them out for a far higher utility and greater adaptation 
to the varying experiences of individual life than the more 
fixed and machine-like lower centres: every thought leaves 
in them its trace for good or ill; and the moral truism that 
the more often we yield to temptation—the more often an 
evil solicitation, sensory or otherwise, has resulted in a wrong 
act—the harder it is to resist the repetition of it, has its par¬ 
allel (and we can hardly doubt its physical antecedent) in the 
marking out of a path of easier conduction from perceptive 
to volitional centres in the brain. The knowledge that every 
weak yielding degrades our brain structure and leaves its trail 
in that organ through which man is the “ paragon of animals,” 
while every resistance makes less close the bond between the 
thought and the act for all future time, ought surely to 
“give us pause:” on the other hand, every right action helps 
to establish a “ path of least resistance,” and makes its sub¬ 
sequent performance easier. 


632 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The brain, like the muscles, is improved and strengthened 
by exercise and injured by overwork or idleness; and just as 
a man may specially develop one set of muscles and neglect 
the rest until they degenerate, so he may do with his brain; 
developing one set of intellectual faculties and leaving the 
rest to lie fallow until, at last, he almost loses the power of 
using them at all. The fierceness of the battle of life nowa¬ 
days especially tends to produce such lopsided mental de¬ 
velopments; how often does one meet the business man, so 
absorbed in money-getting that he has lost all power of ap¬ 
preciating any but the lower sensual pleasures; the intel¬ 
lectual joys of art, science, and literature have no charm for 
him; he is a mere money-making machine. One, also, not 
unfrequently meets the scientific man with no appreciation 
of art or literature; and literary men utterly incapable of 
sympathy with science. A good collegiate education in early 
life, on a broad basis of mathematics, languages, and the 
natural sciences, is a great security against such imperfect 
mental growth; one danger in American life is the tendency 
to put lads in a technical college, or to start them in business 
before they have attained any broad general education. An¬ 
other danger, no doubt, is the opposite one of making the 
training too broad; a man who knows one or two literatures 
fairly well, and who has mastered the elements of mathemat¬ 
ics and of one of the observational or experimental sciences, 
is likely to have a better and more utilizable brain than he 
who has a smattering of half a dozen languages and a con¬ 
fused idea of all the “ ologies.” The habits of mental sloven¬ 
liness, the illogical thinking, and the incapacity to know 
when a thing really is mastered and understood, which one so 
often finds as the results of such an education, are far worse 
than the narrowness apt to follow the opposite error, which 
is often associated with the power of accurate logical thought. 
Those who are deprived of the advantages of a general colle¬ 
giate education may now, more easily than at any previous 
period, cultivate mental breadth by reading some of the many 
excellent general reviews and magazines, and the readable 
but exact popular expositions now available on nearly all 
subjects, which are such a feature of our age. Associating, 
out of working hours, with those whose special pursuits are 
different from our own is almost necessary to those who 
would avoid such an asymmetrical development as almost 
amounts to intellectual deformity. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 


VOICE AND SPEECH. 

Voice consists of sounds produced by the vibrations of 
two elastic bands, the true vocal cords , placed in the larynx, 
an upper modified portion of the passage which leads from the 
pharynx to the lungs. When the vocal cords are put in a cer¬ 
tain position, air driven past them sets them in periodic vibra¬ 
tion, and they emit a musical note; the lungs and respiratory 
muscles are, therefore, accessory parts of the vocal apparatus: 
the strength of the blast produced by them determines the 
loudness of the voice. The larynx itself is the essential voice- 
organ: its size primarily determines the pitch of the voice, 
which is lower the longer the vocal cords; and, hence, shrill 
in children, and usually higher pitched in women than in 
men; the male larynx grows rapidly at commencing man¬ 
hood, causing the change commonly known as the “ breaking 
of the voice.” Every voice, while its general pitch is de¬ 
pendent on the length of the vocal cords, has, however, a 
certain range, within limits which determine whether it shall 
be soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, or bass. 
This variety is produced by muscles within the larynx which 
alter the tension of the vocal cords. Those characters of 
voice which we express by such phrases as harsh, sweet, or 
sympathetic, depend on the structure of the vocal cords of 
the individual; cords which in vibrating emit only harmonic 
parlial tones (Chap. XXXV) are pleasant; while those in 
which inharmonic partials are conspicuous are disagreeable. 

The vocal cords alone would produce but feeble sounds; 
those that they emit are strengthened by sympathetic reso¬ 
nance of the air in the pharynx and mouth, the action of 
which may be compared to that of the sounding-board of a 
violin. By movements of throat, soft palate, tongue, cheeks, 
and lips the sounds emitted from the larynx are altered or 

633 


634 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


supplemented in various ways, and converted into articulate 
language or speech. 

The Larynx lies in front of the neck, beneath the hyoid 
bone and above the windpipe; in many persons it is promi¬ 
nent, causing the projection known as Adam’s apple.” It 
consists of a framework of cartilages, partly joined by true 
synovial joints and partly bound together by membranes; 



Fig. 181.—The more important cartilages of the larynx from behind, t, thy¬ 
roid: Cs, its superior, and CL its inferior, horn of the right side; **, cricoid carti¬ 
lage; t, arytenoid cartilage; Pv. the corner to which the posterior end of a vocal 
cord is attached; Pm, corner on which the muscles which approximate or sepa¬ 
rate the vocal cords are inserted; co, cartilage of Santorini. 

muscles are added which move the cartilages with reference 
to one another; and the whole is lined by a mucous mem¬ 
brane. 

The cartilages of the larynx (Fig. 181 ) are nine in num¬ 
ber; three single and median, and three pairs. The largest 
(t) is called the thyroid , and consists of two halves which 
meet at an angle in front, but separate behind so as to inclose 
a V-shaped space, in which most of the remaining cartilages 
lie. The epiglottis (not represented in the figure) is fixed 
to the top of the thyroid cartilage and overhangs the entry 
from the pharynx to the larynx; it may be seen, covered 
by mucous membrane, projecting at the base of the tongue, 
if the latter be pushed down while the mouth is held open in 
front of a mirror; and is, similarly covered, represented, as 
seen from behind, at a in Fig. 182 . The cricoid , the last 




VOICE AND SPEECH, 


635 


of the unpaired cartilages, has the shape of a signet-ring; its 
broad part (**, Fig. 181) is on the posterior side and lies at 
the lower part of the opening between the halves of the 
thyroid; in front and on the sides it is narrow, and a space, 
occupied by the crico-thyroicl membrane , intervenes between 
its upper border and the lower edge of the thyroid cartilage. 
The angles of the latter are produced above and below into 
projecting horns (Cs and Ci , Fig. 181), and the lower horn 
on each side forms a joint with the cricoid. The thyroid can 
be rotated on an axis, passing through the joints on each 
side, and rolled down so that its lower front edge shall come 
nearer the cricoid cartilage, the membrane there intervening 
being folded. The arytenoids (f,Fig. 181) are the largest of 
the paired cartilages; they are seated on the upper edge of 
the posterior wide portion of the cricoid, and form true 
joints with it. Each is pyramidal with a triangular base, 
and has on its tip a small nodule ( co , Fig. 181), the cartilage 
of Santorini. From the tip of each arytenoid cartilage the 
aryteno-epiglottidean fold of mucous membrane (10, Fig. 182) 
extends to the epiglottis; the cartilage of Santorini causes a 
projection (8, Fig. 182) in this; and a little farther on (9) 
is a similar eminence on each side, caused by the remaining 
pair of cartilages, known as the cuneiform, or cartilages of 
Wrish erg. 

The Vocal Cords are bands of elastic tissue which reach 
from the inner angle ( Pv , Fig. 181) of the base of each aryte¬ 
noid cartilage to the angle on the inside of the thyroid where 
the sides of the V unite; they thus meet in front but are 
separated at their other ends. The cords are not, however, 
bare strings, like those of a harp, but covered over with the 
lining mucous membrane of the larynx, a slit, called the 
glottis (c, Fig. 182), being left between them. It is the pro¬ 
jecting cushions formed by them on each side of this slit 
which are set in vibration during phonation. Above each 
vocal cord is a depression, the ventricle of the larynx (b', 
Fig. 182); this is bounded above by a somewhat prominent 
edge, the false vocal cord. Over most of the interior of the 
larynx its mucous membrane is thick and covered by ciliated 
epithelium, and has many mucous glands imbedded in it. 
Over the vocal cords, however, it is represented only by a 
thin layer of flat non-ciliated cells, and contains no glands. 
In quiet breathing, and after death, the free inner edges of the 


636 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


vocal cords are thick and rounded, and seem very unsuitable 
for being readily set in vibration. They are also tolerably 
widely separated behind, the arytenoid cartilages, to which 
their posterior ends are attached, being separated. Air under 


1 



Fig 182.—The larynx viewed from its pharyngeal opening. The back wall of 
the pharynx has been divided and its edges (11) turned aside. 1, body of hyoid; 
2, its small, and 3. its great, horns; 4, upper and lower horns of thyroid cartilage; 
5. mucous membrane of front of pharynx, covering the back of the cricoid carti¬ 
lage; 6. upper end of gullet; 7, windpipe, lying in front of the gullet; 8. eminence 
caused by cartilage of Santorini; 9. eminence caused by cartilage of Wrisberg; 
both lie in, 10. the aryteno-epiglottidean fold of mucous membrane, surrounding 
the opening (aditus laryugis) from pharynx to larynx, a, projecting tip of epi¬ 
glottis; c. the glottis, the lines leading from the letter point to the free vibratory 
edges of the vocal cords, b the ventricles of the larynx: their upper edges, mark¬ 
ing them off from the eminences b, are the false vocal cords. 


these conditions passes through without producing voice. If 
they are watched with the laryngoscope during phonation, it 
is seen that the cords approximate behind so as to narrow the 
glottis; at the same time they become more tense, and their 
inner edges project more sharply and form a better-defined 
margin to the glottis, and their vibrations can be seen. 
These changes are brought about by the delicately co- 















VOICE AND SPEECH 


63 ? 


ordinated activity of a number of small muscles, which move 
the cartilages to which the cords are fixed. 

The Muscles of the Larynx. In describing the direc¬ 
tion and action of these it is convenient to use the words 
front or anterior and back or posterior with reference to the 
larynx itself (that is, as equivalant to ventral and dorsal) and 
not with reference to the head, as usual. The base of each 
arytenoid cartilage is triangular and fits on a surface of the 
cricoid, on which it can slip to and fro to some extent, the 
ligaments of the joint being lax. One corner of the tri¬ 
angular base is directed inwards and forwards (i.e. towards 
the thyroid) and is called the vocal process (Pv , Fig. 181), as 
to it the vocal cords are fixed. The outer posterior angle 
(Pm, Fig, 181) has several muscles inserted on it and is 
called the muscular process. If it be pulled back and 
towards the middle line the arytenoid cartilage will rotate on 
its vertical axis, and roll its vocal processes forwards and out¬ 
wards, and so widen the glottis; the reverse will happen if 
the muscular process be drawn forwards. The muscle pro¬ 
ducing the former movement is the posterior crico-arytenoid 
(Cap, Fig. 183); it arises from the back of the cricoid carti¬ 
lage, and narrows to its insertion into the muscular process 
of the arytenoid on the same side. The opponent of this 
muscle is the lateral crico-arytenoid, which arises from the 
side of the cricoid cartilage, on its inner surface, and passes 
upwards and backwards to the muscular process. The pos¬ 
terior crico-arytenoids, working alone, pull inwards and down¬ 
wards the muscular processes, turn upwards and outwards 
the vocal processes, and separate the posterior ends of the 
vocal cords. The lateral crico-thyroid, working alone, pulls 
downwards and forwards the muscular process, and rotates 
inwards and upwards the vocal process, and narrows the 
glottis; it is the chief agent in producing the approximation 
of the cords necessary for the production of voice. When 
both pairs of muscles act together, however, each neutralizes 
the tendency of the other to rotate the arytenoid cartilage; 
the downward part of the pull of each is, thus, alone left, and 
this causes the arytenoid to slip downwards and outwards, off 
the eminence on the cricoid with which it articulates, as far 
as the loose capsular ligament of the joint will allow. The 
arytenoid cartilages are thus moved apart and the glottis 
greatly widened and brought into its state in deep quiet 


638 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


breathing. Other muscles approximate the arytenoid carti¬ 
lages after the cartilages have been separated. The most im¬ 
portant is the transverse arytenoid ( A , Fig. 183), which runs 
across from one arytenoid cartilage to the other. Another is 
the oblique arytenoid (Taep). which runs across the middle 
line from the base of one arytenoid to the tip of the other; 



Fig. 183.—The larynx seen from behind and dissected so as to display some of 
its muscles. The mucous membrane of the front of the pharynx (5, Fig. 157) has 
been dissected away, so as to display the laryngeal muscles beneath it. Part of 
the left half of tne thyroid cartilage has been cut away, co, cartilage of San¬ 
torini; cm, cartilage of Wrisberg. 


thence certain fibres continue in the aryteno-epiglottidean 
fold (10, Fig. 182) to the base of the epiglottis; this, with its 
fellow, embraces the whole entry to the larynx; when they 
contract they bend inwards the tips of the arytenoid car¬ 
tilages, approximate the edges of the aryteno-epiglottidean 
fold, and draw down the epiglottis, and so close the passage 
from the pharynx to the larynx. When the epiglottis has 
been removed, food and drink rarely enter the larynx in 
swallowing, the folds of mucous membrane being so brought 
together as to effectually close the aperture between them. 

Increased tension of the vocal cords is produced by the 
crico-thyvoid muscles, one of which lies on each side of the 
larynx, over the crico-thyroid membrane. Their action may 




VOICE AND SPEECH. 


639 


be understood by help of the diagram, Fig. 184, in which t 
represents the thyroid cartilage, c 
the cricoid, a an arytenoid, and vc 
a vocal cord. The muscle passes 
obliquely backwards and upwards 
from about d near the front end of 
c , to t , about l y near the pivot (which 
represents the joint between the 
cricoid cartilage and the inferior 
horn of the thyroid). When the 
muscle contracts it pulls together 
the anterior ends of t and c ; either 
by depressing the thyroid (as rep¬ 
resented by the dotted lines) or by raising the front end of 
the cricoid; and thus stretches the vocal cord, if the ary¬ 
tenoid cartilages be held from slipping forwards. The an¬ 
tagonist of the crico-thyroid is the tliyro-arytenoid muscle; 
it lies, on each side, imbedded in the fold of elastic tissue 
forming the vocal cord, and passes from the inside of the 
angle of the thyroid cartilage in front, to the anterior angle 
and front surface of the arytenoid behind. If the latter be 
held firm, the muscle raises the thyroid cartilage from the 
position into which the crico-thyroid pulls it down, and so 
slackens the vocal cords. If the thyroid be held fixed by the 
crico-thyroid muscle, the thyro-arytenoid will help to approxi¬ 
mate the vocal cords, rotatifig inwards the vocal processes of 
the arytenoids. 

The lengthening of the vocal cords when the thyroid 
cartilage is depressed tends to lower their pitch; the in¬ 
creased tension, however, more than compensates for this 
and raises it. There seems, however, still another method 
by which high notes are produced. Beginning at the bot¬ 
tom of his register, a singer can go on up the scale some dis¬ 
tance without a break; but, then, to reach his higher notes, 
must pause, rearrange his larynx, and begin again. What 
happens is that, at first, the vocal processes are turned in, so 
as to approximate but not to meet; the whole length of each 
edge of the glottis then vibrates, and its tension is increased, 
and the pitch of the note raised, by increasing contraction of 
the crico-thyroid. At last this attains its limit and a new 
method has to be adopted. The vocal processes are more 
rolled in, until they touch. This produces a node (see 













640 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Physics) at that point and shortens the length of vocal cord 
which vibrates. The shorter string emits a higher note; se 
the crico-thyroid is relaxed, and then again gradually tight¬ 
ened as the notes sung are raised in pitch from the new 
starting-point. To pass easily and imperceptibly from one 
such arrangement of the larynx to another is a great art in 
singing. There is some reason to believe that a second node 
may, for still higher notes, be produced at a more anterior 
point on the vocal cords. 

The method of production of falsetto notes is uncertain; 
during their emission the free border of the vocal cords 
alone vibrates. 

The range of the human voice is about three octaves, 
from e (80 vib. per 1") on the unaccented octave, in male 
voices, to c on the thrice-accented octave (1024 vib. per 1"), 
in female. Great singers of course go beyond this range; 
basses have been known to take a on the great octave (55 
vib. per 1"); and Nilsson in “II Flauto Magico” used to take 
f on the fourth accented octave (1408 vib. per 1"). Mozart 
heard at Parma, in 1770, an Italian songstress whose voice 
had the extraordinary range from g in the first accented 
octave (198 vib. per 1") to c on the fifth accented octave 
(2112 vib. per 1"). An ordinary good bass voice has a com¬ 
pass from / (88 vib. per 1") to d" (297 vib. per 1"); and a 
soprano from b' (248 vib. per 1") to g ,n (792). 

Vowels are, primarily, compound musical tones produced 
in the larynx. Accompanying the primary partial of each, 
which determines its pitch when said or sung, are a number 
of upper partials, the first five or six being recognizable in 
good full voices. Certain of these upper partials are rein¬ 
forced in the mouth to produce one vowel, and others for 
other vowels; so that the various vowel sounds are really 
musical notes differing from one another in timbre. The 
mouth and throat cavities form an air-chamber above the 
larynx, and this has a note of its own which varies with its 
size and form, as may be observed by opening the mouth 
widely, with the lips retracted, and the cheeks tense; then 
gradually closing it and protruding the lips, meanwhile tap¬ 
ping the cheek. As the mouth changes its form the note 
produced changes, tending in general to pass from a higher 
to a lower pitch and suggesting to the ear at the same time a 
change from the sound of a (father) through 6 (more) to oo 


VOICE AND SPEECH. 


641 


(moor). When the mouth and throat chambers are so ar¬ 
ranged that the air in them has a vibratory rate in unison 
with any partial in the laryngeal tone, it will be set in sym¬ 
pathetic vibration, that partial will be strengthened, and the 
vowel characterized by it uttered. As the mouth alters its 
form, although the same note be still sung, the vowel changes. 
In the above series (a, o, do) the tongue is depressed and the 
cavity forms one chamber; for a this has a wide mouth open¬ 
ing; for o it is narrowed; for oo still more narrowed, and the 
lips protruded so as to increase the length of the resonance 
chamber. The partial tones reinforced in each case are, ac¬ 
cording to Helmholtz— 



oo 


In other cases the mouth and throat cavity is partially sub¬ 
divided, by elevating the tongue, into a wide posterior and a 
narrow anterior part, each of which has its own note; and 
the vowels thus produced owe their character to two rein¬ 
forced partials. This is the case with the series a (man), e 
(there), and i (machine), the tones reinforced by resonance 
in the mouth being— 



The usual ! of English, as in spire, is not a true simple 
vowel but a diphthong, consisting of a (pad) followed by e 
(feet), as may be observed by trying to sing a sustained note 
to the sound i; it will then be seen that it begins as a and 
ends as ee. A simple vowel can be maintained pure as long 
as the breath holds out. 

In uttering true vowel sounds the soft palate is raised so 
as to cut off the air in the nose, which, thus, does not take 
part in the sympathetic resonance. For some other sounds 
(the semi-vowels or resounyits ) the initial step is, as in the 
case of the true vowels, the production of a laryngeal tone; 










642 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


but the soft palate is not raised, and the mouth exit is more 
or less closed by the lips or the tongue; hence the blast partly 
issues through the nose, and the air there takes part in the 
vibrations and gives them a special character; this is the case 
with m, n, and ng . 

Consonants are sounds produced not mainly by the vocal 
cords, but by modifications of the expiratory blast on its way 
through the mouth. The current may be interrupted and 
the sound changed by the lips ( labials ); or, at or near the 
teeth, by the tip of the tongue {dentals) ; or, in the throat, by 
the root of the tongue and the soft palate {gutturals). Con¬ 
sonants are also characterized by the kind of movement 
which gives rise to them. In explosives an interruption to 
the passage of the air-current is suddenly interposed or re¬ 
moved (P, T, B, D, K, G). Other consonants are continuous 
(as F, S, R), and may be subdivided into — (1) aspirates , char¬ 
acterized by the sound produced by a rush of air through a 
narrow passage, as when the lips are approximated (F), or the 
teeth (S), or the tongue is brought near the palate (Sh), or its 
tip against the two rows of teeth, they not being quite in 
contact (Th). For L the tongue is put against the hard 
palate and the air escapes on its sides. For Ch (as in the 
proper Scotch pronunciation of loch) the passage between the 
back of the tongue and the soft palate is narrowed. To 
many of the above pure consonants answer others, in whose 
production true vocalization {i.e. a laryngeal tone) takes a 
part. F with some voice becomes V; S becomes Z, Th soft 
(tee^A) becomes Th hard; and Ch becomes Gh. (2) reso¬ 
nants; these have been referred to above. (3) vibratories 
(the different forms of R), which are due to vibrations of 
parts bounding a constriction put in the course of the air- 
current. Ordinary R is due to vibrations of the tip of the 
tongue held near the hard palate; and guttural R to vibra¬ 
tions of the uvula and parts of the pharynx. 

The consonants may physiologically be classified as in the 
following table (Foster): 


Explosives. Labials, without voice.P. 

“ with voice.B. 

Dentals, without voice.T. 

“ with voice.D. 

Gutturals, without voice... K. 

“ with voice.G (hard). 





VOICE AND SPEECH. 


643 


Aspirates. 


Resonants. 


Labials, without voice.F. 

“ with voice.V. 

Dentals, without voice.S, L, Sh, Th (hard). 

“ with voice.. ..Z, Zh (azure), Th (soft). 

Gutturals, without voice.. .Ch (locA). 

“ with voice.Ch. 

Labial .M. 

Dental .N. 

Guttural .NG. 


Vibratories. Labial —not used in European languages. 

Dental .R (common). 

Guttural .R (guttural). 


H is a laryngeal sound: the vocal cords are separated for 
its production, yet not so far as in quiet breathing. The air- 
current then produces a friction sound but not a true note, 
as it passes the glottis; and this is again modified when the 
current strikes the wall of the pharynx. Simple sudden 
closure of the glottis, attended with no sound, is also a 
speech element, though we do not indicate it with a special 
letter, since it is always understood when a word begins with 
a vowel, and only rarely is used at other times. The Greeks 
had a special sign for it, *, the soft breathing; and another, 
c , the hard breathing , answering somewhat to our h and indi¬ 
cating that the larynx was to be held open, so as to give a 
friction sound, but not voice. 

In whispering there is no true voice; the latter implies 
true tones , and these are only produced by periodic vibra¬ 
tions; whispering is a noise. To produce it the glottis is 
considerably narrowed but the cords are not so stretched as to 
produce a sharply defined edge on them, and the air driven 
past is then thrown into irregular vibrations. Such vibra¬ 
tions as coincide in period with the air in the mouth and 
throat are always present in sufficient number to characterize 
the vowels; and the consonants are produced in the ordinary 
way, though the distinction between such letters as P and B, 
F and V, remains imperfect. 












CHAPTER XXXIX. 


REPRODUCTION. 

Reproduction in General. In all cases reproduction 
consists, essentially, in the separation of a portion of living 
matter from a parent; the separated part bearing with it, or 
inheriting , certain tendencies to repeat, with more or less 
variation, the life history of its progenitor. In the more 
simple cases a parent merely divides into two or more pieces, 
each resembling itself except in size; these then grow and 
repeat the process; as, for instance, in the case of Amoeba and 
our own white blood corpuscles (pp. 23, 44). Such a process 
may be summed up in two words as discontinuous growth; 
the mass, instead of increasing in size without segmentation, 
divides as it grows, and so forms independent living beings. 
In some tolerably complex multicellular animals we find 
essentially the same thing; at times certain cells of the fresh¬ 
water Polype multiply by simple division in the manner 
above described, but there is a certain concert between them: 
they build up a tube projecting from the side of the parent, a 
mouth-opening forms at the distal end of this, tentacles 
sprout out around it, and only when thus completely built up 
and equipped is the young Hydra set loose on its own career. 
How closely such a mode of multiplication is allied to mere 
growth is shown by other polypes in which the young, thus 
formed, remain permanently attached to the parent stem, so 
that a compound animal results. This mode of reproduction 
(known as gemmation or budding) may be compared to the 
method in which many of the ancient Greek colonies were 
founded; carefully organized and prepared at home, they 
were sent out with a due proportion of artificers of various 
kinds; so that the new commonwealth had from its first sep¬ 
aration a considerable division of employments in it, and was, 
on a small scale, a repetition of the parent community. In 
the great majority of animals, however (even those which at 
times multiply by budding), a different mode of reproduction 

644 


REPRODUCTION. 


645 


occurs, one more like that by which our western lands were 
settled and gradually built up into Territories and States. 
The new individual in the political world began with little 
differentiation; it consisted of units, separated from older and 
highly organized societies, and these units at first did pretty 
much everything, each man for himself, with more or less 
efficiency. As growth took place development also occurred; 
persons assumed different duties and performed different 
work until, finally, a fully organized State was formed. 
Similarly, the body of one of the higher animals is, at an 
early stage of life, merely a collection of undifferentiated 
cells, each capable of multiplication by division, and more or 
less retaining all its original protoplasmic properties; and 
with no specific individual endowment or function. The 
mass (Chap. III.) then slowly differentiates into the various 
tissues, each with a predominant character and duty; at the 
same time the majority of the cells lose their primitive powers 
of reproduction, though exactly how completely is a problem 
not yet sufficiently studied. In adult Vertebrates it seems 
certain that the white blood corpuscles multiply by division: 
and in some cases (in the newts or tritons, for example) a 
limb is reproduced after amputation. But exactly what cells 
take part in such restorative processes is uncertain; we do 
not know if the old bone corpuscles left form new bones, old 
muscle-fibres new muscles, and so on; though it is probable 
that the little-differentiated leucocytes build up most of the 
new limb. In Mammals no such restoration occurs; an am¬ 
putated leg may heal at the stump but does not form again. 
In the healing processes the connective tissues play the main 
part, as we might expect; their cellular elements being but 
little modified from their primitive state (p. 102) can still 
multiply and develop. New blood capillaries, however, sprout 
out from the sides of old, and new epidermis seems only to be 
formed by the multiplication of epidermic cells; hence the 
practice, frequently adopted by surgeons, of transplanting 
little bits of skin to points on the surface of an extensive 
burn or ulcer. In blood capillaries and epidermis the de¬ 
parture from the primary undifferentiated cell is but slight; 
and, as regards the cuticle, one of the permanent physiologi¬ 
cal characters of the cells of the rete mucosum is their multi¬ 
plication throughout the whole of life; that is a main physio¬ 
logical characteristic of the tissue: the same is very probably 


646 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


true of the protoplasmic cells forming the walls of the capil¬ 
laries. When a highly differentiated tissue is replaced in 
the body of mammals after breaking down or removal, it is 
usually by the activity of special cells set apart for that pur¬ 
pose, or by repair or outgrowth of the cells affected and not 
by their division. The red blood corpuscles are constantly 
being broken down and replaced, but the new ones are not 
formed by the division of already fully formed corpuscles but 
by certain special hcematoblastic cells retained throughout 
life in the red marrow of bone and perhaps in the spleen. 
The nervous tissues are highly differentiated and a nerve is 
often regenerated after division, but this is by outgrowth of 
the ends of axis cylinders still attached to their cells and by 
secondary formation of a medullary sheath around these, and 
not by division or multiplication of already existing fibres. 
A striped muscle when cut across is healed by the formation 
of a band of connective tissue; after a very long time it is 
said that true muscular fibres may be found in the cicatrix, 
but their origin is not known; it is probably not from pre¬ 
viously developed muscle fibres. On the other hand, the less 
differentiated unstriated muscle has been observed to be re¬ 
paired in some cases after injury by true karyokinetic division 
of previously formed muscle cells. Although many gland- 
cells in the performance of their physiological work are par¬ 
tially broken down and lost in their secretion, and then 
repaired by the residue of the cell, multiplication by division 
of fully differentiated gland-cells does not appear to occur, if 
we except such organs as the testes, the secretion of which 
consists essentially of cells. An excised portion of a salivary 
or parotid gland is never regenerated: the wound is repaired 
by connective tissues. 

We find, then, as we ascend in the animal scale a diminish¬ 
ing reproductive power in the tissues generally: with the 
increasing division of physiological labor, with the changes 
that fit pre-eminently for one work, there is a loss of other 
faculties, and this one among them. The more specialized a 
tissue the less the reproductive power of its elements, and the 
most differentiated tissues are either not reproduced at all after 
injury, or only by the specialization of amoeboid cells, and not 
by a progenitive activity of survivors of the same kind as those 
destroyed. In none of the higher animals, therefore, do we 
find multiplication by simple division, or by budding: no one 


REPRODUCTION. 


647 


cell, and no group of cells used for the physiological mainte¬ 
nance of the individual, can build up a new complete living 
being; but the continuance of the race is specially provided 
for by setting apart certain cells which shall have this one 
property—cells whose duty is to the species and not to any one 
representative of it—an essentially altruistic element in the 
otherwise egoistic whole. 

Sexual Reproduction. In some cases, especially among 
insects, the specialized reproductive cells can develop, each for 
itself, under suitable conditions, and give rise to new indi¬ 
viduals; such a mode of reproduction is culled parthenogenesis: 
but in the majority of cases, and always in the higher animals, 
this is not so; the fusion of two cells, or of products of two 
cells, is a necessary preliminary to development. Commonly 
the coalescing cells differ considerably in size and form, and 
one takes a more direct share in the developmental processes; 
this is the egg-cell or ovum; the other is the sperm-cell or 
spermatozoon. The fusion of the two is known as fertiliza¬ 
tion. Animals producing both ova and spermatozoa are 
hermaphrodite; those bearing ova only, female; and those 
spermatozoa only, male: hermaphroditism is not found in 
Vertebrates, except in rare and doubtful cases of monstrosity. 

Accessory Reproductive Organs. The organ in which 
ova are produced is known as the ovary, that forming sperma¬ 
tozoa, as the testis or testicle; but in different groups of animals 
many additional accessory parts may be developed. Thus, 
in all but the very lowest Mammalia, the offspring is nourished 
for a considerable portion of its early life within the body of 
its mother, a special cavity, the uterus or womb, being pro¬ 
vided for this purpose: the womb communicates with the 
exterior by a passage, the vagina; and two tubes, the oviducts 
or Fallopian tubes, convey the eggs to it from the ovaries. 
In addition, mammary glands provide milk for the nourish¬ 
ment of the young in the first months after birth. In the 
male mammal we find as accessory reproductive organs, vasa 
deferentia which convey from the testes the seminal fluid con¬ 
taining spermatozoa; vesiculce seminales (not present in all 
Mammalia), glands whose secretion is mixed with that of the 
testes or is expelled after it in the sexual act; a prostate gland, 
whose secretion is added to the semen; and an erectile organ, 
the penis, by which the fertilizing liquid is conveyed into the 
vagina of the female. 


648 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


The Male Reproductive Organs. The testes in man are 
paired tubular glands, which lie in a pouch of skin called the 
scrotum . This pouch is subdivided internally by a partition 
into right and left chambers, in each of which a testicle lies. 
The chambers are lined inside by a serous membrane, the 
tunica vaginalis , and this doubles back (like the pleura round 
the lung) and covers the exterior of the gland. Between the 
external and reflected layers of the tunica vaginalis is a space 
containing a small quantity of lymph. 

The testicles develop in the abdominal cavity, and only 
later (though commonly before birth) descend into the scrotum, 
passing through apertures in the muscles, etc., of the abdom¬ 
inal wall, and then sliding down over the front of the pubes, 
beneath the skin. The cavity of the tunica vaginalis at first 
is a mere offshoot of the peritoneal cavity, and its serous mem¬ 
brane is originally a part of the peritoneum. In the early years 
of life the passage along which the testis passes usually becomes 
nearly closed up, and the communication between the peri¬ 
toneal cavity and that of the tunica vaginalis is also obliterated. 
Traces of this passage can, however, readily be observed in 
male infants; if the skin inside the thigh be tickled a muscle 
lying beneath the skin of the scrotum is 
made to contract reflexly, and the testis 
is jerked up some way towards the 
abdomen and quite out of the scrotum. 
Sometimes the passage remains per¬ 
manently open and a coil of intestine 
may descend along it and enter the 
scrotum, constituting an inguinal 
hernia or rupture. A hydrocele is an 
excessive accumulation of liquid in the 
serous cavity of the tunica vaginalis. 

Beneath its covering of serous mem¬ 
brane each testis has a proper fibrous 
tunic of its own. This forms a thick 
mass on the posterior side of the gland, 
from which partitions or septa (i, Fig. 
185) radiate, subdividing the gland 
into many chambers. In each chamber 
lie several greatly coiled seminiferous tubules , a, a , averaging in 
length 0.68 metre (27 inches) and in diameter only 0.14 mm. 
( T ^o inch). Their total number in each gland is about 800. 



Fig. 185.—Diagram of a 
vertical section through the 
testis, a, a, tubuli semini- 
feri; b, vasa recta; d, vasa 
efferentia ending in the 
coni vasculosi; e, e. epidi¬ 
dymis. h , vas deferens. 



REPROD UCTION. 


649 


Near the posterior side of the testis the tubules unite to form 
about 20 vasa recta (5), and these pass out of the gland at its 
upper end, as the vasa efferentia ( d ), which become coiled up 
into conical masses, the coni vasculosi ; these, when unrolled, 
are tubes from 15 to 20 cm. (6—8 inches) in length; they taper 
somewhat from their commencements at the vasa efferentia, 
where they are 0.5 mm. (-fa inch) in diameter, to the other 
end where they terminate in the epididymis ( e , e, Fig. 185). 
The latter is a narrow mass, slightly longer than the testicle, 
which lies along the posterior side of that organ, near the lower 
end of which it passes (g) into the vas deferens , h. If the 
epididymis be carefully unravelled it is found to consist of a 
tube about 6 metres (20 feet) in length, and varying in diam¬ 
eter from 0.35 to 0.25 mm. (^ to fa inch). 

The vas deferens (A, Fig. 185) commences at the lower 
part of the epididymis as a coiled tube, but it soon ceases to be 
convoluted and passes up beneath the skin covering the inner 
part of the groin, till it gets above the pelvis and then, passing 
through the abdominal walls, turns inwards, backwards, and 
downwards, to the under side of the urinary bladder, where it 
joins the duct of the seminal vesicle; it is about 0.6 meters 
(2 feet) in length and 2.5 mm. (fa inch) in diameter. Its 
lining epithelium is ciliated. 

The vesiculce seminates , two in number, are membranous 
receptacles which lie, one on each side, beneath the bladder, 
between it and the rectum. They are commonly about 5 cm. 
(2 inches) long and a little more than a centimetre wide (or 
about 0.5 inch) at their broadest part. The narrowed end of 
each enters the vas deferens on its own side, the tube formed 
by the union being the ejaculatory duct , which, after a course 
of about an inch, enters the urethra near the neck of the 
bladder. In some animals^he vesiculce seminates form a liquid 
which is added to the secretion of the testis. In man they 
appear to be merely reservoirs in which the semen collects. 

The prostate gland is'a dense body, about the size of a 
large chestnut, which-isurrounds the commencement of the 
urethra; the ejaculatory ducts pass through it. It is largely 
made up of fibrous and unstriped muscular tissues, but con¬ 
tains also a number of small secreting saccules whose ducts 
open into the urethra. The prostatic secretion though small 
in amount would appear to be of importance: at least the 
gland remains undeveloped in persons who have been castrated 


650 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


in childhood; and atrophies after removal of the testicles later 
in life. 

The male urethra leads from the bladder to the end of the 
penis, where it terminates in an opening, the meatus urinarius. 
It is described by anatomists as made up of three portions, 
the prostatic, the membranous, aDd the spongy. The first is 
surrounded by the prostate gland and receives the ejaculatory 
ducts. On its posterior wall, close to the bladder, is an eleva¬ 
tion containing erectile tissues (see below) and supposed to be 
dilated during sexual congress, so as to cut off the passage to 
the urinary receptacle. On this crest is an opening leading 
into a small recess, the utricle, which is of interest, since the 
study of its embryology shows it to be an undeveloped male 
uterus. The succeeding membranous portion of the urethra 
is about 1.8 cm. (f inch) long; the spongy portion lies in the 
penis. 

penis is composed mainly of erectile tissue, i.e. , tissues 
so arranged as to inclose cavities which can be distended by 
blood. Covered outside by the skin, internally it is made up 
of three elongated cylindrical masses, two of which, the corpora 
cavernosa , lie on its anterior side; the third, the corpus spongi¬ 
osum, surrounds the urethra and lies on the posterior side of 
the organ for most of its length; it, however, alone forms 
the terminal dilatation, or glans, of the penis. Each corpus 
civernosum is closely united to its fellow in the middle line 
and extends from the pubic bones, to which it is attached 
l)3hind, to the glans penis in front. It is enveloped in a dense 
connective-tissue capsule from which numerous bars, contain¬ 
ing white fibrous, elastic, and unstriped muscular tissues, 
radiate and intersect in all directions, dividing its interior into 
many irregular chambers called venous sinuses. Into these 
blood is conveyed partly through open capillaries, partly 
directly by the open ends of small arteries; this blood is car¬ 
ried off by veins proceeding from the sinuses. 

The arteries of the penis are supplied with vaso-dilator 
nerves, the nervi erigentes, derived from the sacral plexus. 
Under certain conditions these are stimulated and, the 
arteries expanding, blood is poured into the venous sinules 
faster than the veins drain it off; the latter are probably also 
at the same time compressed where they leave the penis by the 
contraction of certain muscles passing over them. Simul¬ 
taneously the involuntary muscular tissue of the bars ramify- 


REPRODUCTION. 


651 


ing through the erectile masses relaxes. As a result the whole 
organ becomes distended and finally rigid and erect. The 
co-ordinating centre of erection lies in the lumbar region of the 
spinal cord, and may be excited reflexly by mechanical stimu¬ 
lation of the penis, or under the influence of nervous impulses 
originating in the brain and associated with sexual emotions. 
The corpus spongiosum resembles the corpora cavernosa in 
essential structure and function. 

The skin of the penis is thin and forms a simple layer for 
some distance; towards the end of the organ it separates and 
forms a fold, the foreslcin or prepuce , which doubles back, 
and, becoming soft, moist, red, and very vascular, covers the 
glands to the meatus urinarius , where it becomes continuous 
with the mucous membrane of the urethra; in it, near the 
projecting posterior rim of the glans, are imbedded many 
sebaceous glands. It possesses nerve end organs (genital 
corpuscles) which much resemble end bulbs in structure. 



The Seminal Fluid. The essential elements of the tes¬ 
ticular secretion are much modified cells, the spermatozoa, 
which are passed out with some albuminous liquid. The 
spermatozoa (Fig. 186) are motile bodies about 
0.04 m.m. (-g-J-g- inch) in length. They have a 
flattened clear body or head and a long vibratile 
tail or cilium; the portion of the tail nearest to 
the head is thicker than the rest, and is known 
as the neck. The mode of development of a 
spermatozoon shows that the head is a cell-nu¬ 
cleus and the neck and tail a modified cell- 
body. 

On cross-section a seminiferous tubule pre¬ 
sents externally a well-marked basement membrane, upon 
which are borne several layers of cells; the lumen or bore of 
the tubule is in great part occupied by the tails of sper¬ 
matozoa projecting from some of the lining cells. The outer 
cells, those next the basement membrane, are arranged in a 
single layer, and are usually found in one or other stage of 
active karyokinetic division (p. 19). The result of the divi¬ 
sion is an outer cell, which remains next the basement mem¬ 
brane to repeat the process, and an inner, which is the mother- 
cell of spermatozoa. The latter cell by repeated mitotic divi¬ 
sion give rise to a number of cells lying side by side and each 
having a relatively large nucleus and small cell-body. These 


Fig. 18 0.—Sper¬ 
matozoa, seen 
from the front and 
in side view, a, 
head; b, neck; c, 
tail. 


652 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


cells elongate, the nucleus remaining near the deeper end and 
the protoplasm extending towards the lumen of the tubule, 
into which it ultimately projects. Such cells are sperma¬ 
toblast s, and lie in bunches side by side and several rows 
dee]). Interlaced among them are other granular supporting 
cells of the epithelium, which are probably concerned with 
the nutrition of the essential cells. The final step by which 
the spermatoblast is converted into a spermatozoon is a kary- 
okinetic division into tw T o unequal cells: a part of the nu¬ 
cleus with a little of the protoplasm separates and appears to 
have no further function; the remaining part of the nucleus 
(male pronucleus) remains as the head of the spermatozoon 
and the cell protoplasm develops into the neck and tail. 
The spermatozoa appear frequently to be cast off before 
their development is completed: at least many spermato- 
blasts which have not gone through the final stages are 
found in the vasa recta, and even in the vas deferens. 
Probably the secretion normally collects in the vesiculae 
seminales, and there undergoes its final elaboration. 

The Reproductive Organs of the Female. Each ovary 
(o, Fig. 187) is a dense oval mass about 3.25 cm. (1.5 inches) 
in length, 2 cm. (0.75 inch) in width, and 1.27 cm. (0.5 inch) 
in thickness; it weighs from 4 to 7 grams (60-100 grains). 
The organs lie in the pelvic cavity enveloped in a fold of 
peritoneum (the broad ligament ), and receive blood-vessels 
and nerves along one border. From time to time ova reach 
the surface, burst through the enveloping peritoneum, and 
are received by the wide fringed aperture,j£, of the oviduct 
or Fallopian tube, od. This tube narrows towards its inner 
end, where it communicates with the uterus, and is lined by 
a mucous membrane, covered by ciliated epithelium; plaiu 
muscular tissue is also developed in its w 7 all. The uterus 
(u, c, Fig. 187) is a hollow organ, with relatively thick mus¬ 
cular walls (left unshaded in the figure); it contains the 
foetus during pregnancy and expels it at birth; it lies in the 
pelvis between the urinary bladder and the rectum (Fig. 188); 
the Fallopian tubes open into its anterior corners. It is free 
above, but its lower end is attached to and projects into the 
vagina. In the fully developed virgin state the organ is 
somewhat pear-shaped, but flattened from before back; about 
7.5 cm. (3 inches) in length, 5 cm. (2 inches) in breadth at 
its upper widest part, and 2.5 cm. (1 inch) in thickness; it 


REPRODUCTION. 


653 


weighs from 25 to 42 grams (f to oz.). The upper wider 
portion of the womb is known as its body; the cavity of this 
is produced at each side to meet the openings of the Fallo¬ 
pian tubes, and narrows below to the neck , or cervix uteri , 
opposite c (Fig. 187), the communication between neck and 
body cavities being known as the os internum. Below this 
the neck dilates somewhat: it forms no part of the cavity in 



w r hich the embryo is retained and nourished. The lowest 
part of the cervix reaches into the vagina and communicates 
with it by a transverse aperture, the os uteri. During gesta¬ 
tion or pregnancy the foetus develops in the body of the 
womb, which becomes greatly enlarged and rises high into 
the abdomen: the virgin womb lies mainly below the level of 
the bones of the pelvis. 

The chief bulk of the non-gravid uterus consists of a coat 
of plain muscular tissue, arranged in a thin outer longitudinal 
layer, and an inner, thicker, consisting of oblique and cir¬ 
cular fibres. Between the layers is an extensive vascular net¬ 
work, with many dilated veins or venous sinuses. The mus¬ 
cular coat is lined internally by a ciliated mucous membrane, 
and is covered externally by the peritoneum, bands of which 
project from each side of it as the broad ligaments (ll, Fig. 
187). The outer layer of the mucous membrane presents a 
very well developed muscularis mucosae , much thicker than 
the corresponding layer in the gastric or intestinal mucous 
membranes and much less sharply marked off from the 
true muscular coat outside it. The main thickness of the 







654 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


mucous membrane consists of closely set, simple or slightly 
branched, tubular glands; between these is a close blood- 
vascular and lymphatic network. The glands open on the 
interior of the womb; they and the mucous membrane be¬ 
tween their mouths are lined by a single layer of columnar 
ciliated cells, with some goblet cells between them. In the 
cervix the glands are shorter, and many of the epithelial 
cells not ciliated. The viscid mucus secreted by the uterine 
glands is alkaline or neutral. 



Fig. 188.—The viscera of the female pelvis as exposed by a dorso-ventral me¬ 
dian section, s, symphysis pubis; v , v', urinary bladder; n, urethra; u, uterus; 
va, vagina; r, r', rectum; a. anal opening; Z, right labium major; n, right nympha; 
h, hymen; cl, divided cilitoris. 

The vagina is a distensible passage, extending from the 
uterus to the exterior; dorsally it rests on the rectum, and 
ventrally is in contact witli the bladder and urethra. It is 
lined by mucous membrane, the epithelium of which is much 
like the epidermis but thinner; outside the mucous membrane 
the vagina is made up of areolar, erectile, and unstriped mus¬ 
cular tissues. Around its lower end is a ring of striated mus¬ 
cular tissue, the sphincter vagince. 







reproduction. 


6o5 


The vulva is a general term for all the portions of the female 
generatave organs visible from the exterior. Over the front of 

fn,m P iT t lS Sk r? 18 elevated V adipose tissue beneath it, and 
f™ S * he ™ ns Ve ™ns. Prom this two folds of skin (l, Pig 
JS’* 6 la t bla ma J° rn ’ ex ‘end downwards and backwards on 
O n 8 t 6ft ’ bey0aA which they again unite. 

jn , P , , t 7, g the labla ma .i°raa shallow genito-urinary sinus, 
into which the urethra and vagina open, is exposed. At the 
upper portion of this sinus lies the clitoris, a small and very- 
sensitive erectile organ, resembling a miniature penis in struc- 
tuie, except that it has no corpus spongiosum and is not 
traversed by the urethra. From the clitoris descend two folds 
°V~ membrane, the nymplim or labia interna , between 
winch is the vestibule , a recess containing, above, the opening 
ol the short female urethra, and, below, the aperture of the 
vagina, which is in the virgin more or less closed by a thin 
duplicature of mucous membrane, the hymen. 



Fro. 189.—A section of a Mammalian ovarv. cnnsidcrahlv magnified. 1, outer 
capsule of ovarv: 2. 3. 3', stroma: 4, blood-vessels: 5, rudimentarv Graafian fol¬ 
licles: 6. 7. 8. follicles bemnning' to enlarge and mature, and receding 1 from the sur¬ 
face; 9 a nearlv ripe follicle which is extending: towards the surface preparatory to 
discharg-in? the ovum: n, membrana granulosa : b. discus proliererus: c, ovum, with 
d. germinal vesicle, and e e-erminal snot. The g-eneral cavity of the follicle (in 
which 9 is printed) is filled with lymph-like transudation liquid during life. 

Microscopic Structure of the Ovary. The main mass of 
the ovary consists of a dense connective-tissue stroma, con¬ 
taining unstrined muscle, blood-vessels, and nerves: it is 
covered externallv by a ueculiar aerminal epithelium , and con¬ 
tains imbedded in it manv minute cavities, the Graafian folli¬ 
cle*. in whieh ova. lie. If a thin section of an ovary be examined 
with the microscope many hundreds of small Graafnui follicles* 



656 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


each about 0.25 mm. (yfo- inch) in diameter, will be found 
imbedded in it near the surface. These are lined by cells, and 
each contains a single ovum. In a woman of child-bearing 
age there will be found also, deeper in, larger follicles (7, 8, 

9, Fig. 189), their cavities being distended, during life, by 
liquid; in these the essential structure may be more readily 
made out. Each has an external fibrous coat constituted by 
a dense and vascular layer of the ovarian stroma; within this 
come several layers of lining cells (9, a, Fig. 189) constituting 
the membrana granulosa. At one point, b, the cells of this 
layer are heaped up, forming the discus proligerus , which 
projects into the liquid filling the cavity of the follicle. Buried 
among the cells of the discus proligerus the ovum, c, lies. 

The Mammalian Ovum. As the Graafian follicles enlarge 
the ova grow but not proportionately, so that they occupy 
relatively less of the cavities of the larger follicles: the cells of 
the discus proligerus probably elaborate food for the egg cell 
from material derived from the blood-vessels which form a 
close network around most of each enlarging Graafian follicle 
and transude crude nutritive matter into the liquid filling 
most of the follicle. The fully formed 
ovum (Fig. 190) is about 0.2 mm. 
( T |o- inch) in diameter: it has a well- 
marked outer coat or sac, a, the zona 
radiata, zona pellucida or vitelline 
membrane , surrounding a very granu¬ 
lar cell-body or vitellus , b , in which is a 
conspicuous nucleus, c, here named 
the germinal vesicle and possessing 
a nucleolus or germinal spot. The 
zona pellucida exhibits distinct radial 
markings which probably are due to \ 
fine tubes traversing it. The main bulk 
of the vitellus or yelk consists of highly refracting spheroidal 
particles of nutritive matter (deutoplasm) imbedded in and 
concealing a true protoplasmic reticulum. In the eggs of birds 
and reptiles the deutoplasm is in very large amount and forms 
nearly all of the yelk, the protoplasm being for the most part 
aggregated around the germinal vesicle at a small area on one 
side of the yelk. It is in this area that new cell-formation 
occurs and the embryo is built up, the rest of the yelk being 
gradually absorbed by it: such eggs are known as mesoblastio 



Fig. 190.—A human ovum; 
somewhat diagrammatic, a, 
zona pellucida; b, vitellus; c, 
germinal vesicle, with distinct 
reticulum of karyoplasm and 
a nucleolus or germinal spot. 


REPRODUCTION. 


6D? 


or partly-dividing eggs. In all the higher mammalia the 
dentoplasm is relatively sparse and tolerably evenly mingled 
with the protoplasm, and the whole fertilized ovum divides to 
form the first cells of the embryo: such eggs are named 
holoblastic. 

The Maturation of the Ovum. From time to time, 
usually at intervals of about four weeks, in a woman of child¬ 
bearing age, certain ova after attaining the size and struc¬ 
ture described in the preceding paragraph undergo further 
changes by which the egg-cell is rendered capable of fertiliza 
tion. These phenomena, known as the maturation of the 
ovum , result in separation of small parts of the nucleus or 
germinal vesicle and cell protoplasm from the rest. They are 
essentially typical cases of indirect cell division (p. 19). The 
cell-body shrinks a little so as to not quite fill the zona pellu- 
cida, and the germinal vesicle approaches one side. Meanwhile 
the nuclear membrane and karyoplasm form the chromatic 
loop and this divides into the usual two sets of Y s. One 
set of these, with part of the nuclear plasm, now separates 
with a little of the cell protoplasm 
to form a small cell, the first polar 
globule or directive corpuscle ( c , Fig 
191). The much larger cell result 
ing from the division and represent¬ 
ing the remainder of the vitellus 
and nucleus now repeats the process, 
and gives rise to the second polar 
globule. In Fig. 191 the first polar 
globule is shown at c , as already 
separated, and the nucleus, d, is 
dividing, preparatory to the forma¬ 
tion of the second directive cor¬ 
puscle. The stage of karyokmesis 
is more advanced than those repre¬ 
sented in Fig. 10. The two polar 
globules lie for a time (Fig. 192) within the zona pellucida 
in the space left by the shrinkage of the vitellus, but take no 
part in the formation of the embryo and soon disappear. The 
rest of the original ovum is now mature and ready for fertili¬ 
zation; its nucleus is known as the female pronucleus , fn , 
Fig. 192. It passes towards the centre of the oyum and forms 



Fig. 191.—An ovum about to 
form the second polar globule. 
a, zona pellucida ; b. space filled 
with liquid and left by the shrink¬ 
age of the vitellus; c, first polar 
globule; d, nucleus of ovum divid- 
ing preparatory to the separation 
of the second polar globule; v, 
vitellus. showing radial arrange¬ 
ment of its granules near the end 
of the nuclear spindle. 



658 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


the usual recticulum of karyoplasm found in normal resting 
nuclei (Fig. 8). 

Ovulation. From puberty, during the whole child-hearing 
period of life, certain comparatively very large Graafian follicles 
may nearly always he found either close to the surface of the 
ovary or projecting on its exterior. These, by accumulation 
of liquid within them, have become distended to a diameter 
of about 4 mm. (i inch); finally, the thinned projecting por¬ 
tion of the wall of the follicle, which differs from the rest in 
containing few blood-vessels, gives way and the ovum is dis¬ 
charged, surrounded by some cells of the discus proligerus. 
The emptied follicle becomes filled up with a reddish-yellow 
mass of cells, and constitutes the corpus luteum , which recedes 
again to the interior of the ovary and disappears in three or 
four weeks, unless pregnancy occur; in that case the corpus 
luteum increases for a time, and persists during the greater 
part of the gestation period. 

Menstruation. Ovulation occurs during the sexual life of 
a healthy woman at intervals of about four weeks, and is 
attended with important changes in other portions of the gen¬ 
erative apparatus. The ovaries and Fallopian tubes become 
congested, and the fimbriae of the latter are erected and come 
into contact with the ovary so as to receive any ova discharged. 
Whether the fimbriae embrace the ovary and catch the ovum, 
or merely touch it at various points and the ova are swept along 
them by their cilia to the cavity to the oviduct, is not certain. 
Having entered the Fallopian tube the egg slowly passes on 
to the uterus, probably moved by the cilia lining the oviduct; 
its descent pro! ably takes about four or five days; if not fertil¬ 
ized, it dies and is passed out. In the womb important changes 
occur at or just before the periods of ovulation; its mucous 
membrane becomes swollen and soft, and minute hemorrhages 
occur in its substance. The superficial layers of the uterine 
mucous membrane are broken down, and discharged along with 
more or less blood, constituting the menses , or monthly sick¬ 
ness, which commonly lasts from three to five days. During 
this time the vaginal secretion is also increased, and, mixed with 
the blood discharged, more or less alters its color and usually 
destroys its coagulating power. Except during pregnancy and 
while suckling, menstruation occurs at the above intervals, 
from puberty up to about the forty-fifth year; the periods 
then become irregular, and finally the discharges cease; this 


REPRODUCTION. 


659 


is an indication that ovulation has come to an end, and that 
the sexual life of the woman is completed. This time, the 
climacteric or “ turn of life,” is a critical one; various local 
disorders are apt to supervene, and even mental derangement. 

Hygiene of Menstruation. During menstruation there is 
apt to be more or less general discomfort and nervous irrita¬ 
bility ; the woman is not quite herself, and those responsible 
for her happiness ought to watch and tend her with special 
solicitude, forbearance, and tenderness, and protect her from 
anxiety and agitation. Any strong emotion, especially of a 
disagreeable character, is apt to check the flow, and this is 
always liable to be followed by serious consequences. A sudden 
chill often has the same effect; hence a menstruating woman 
ought always to be warmly clad, and take more than usual 
care to avoid draughts or getting wet. At these periods, also, 
the uterus is enlarged and heavy, and being (as may be seen 
in Fig. 188) but slightly supported, and that near its lower 
end, it is especially apt to be displaced or distorted; it may 
tilt forwards or sideways (versions of the uterus ), or be bent 
where the neck and body of the organ meet {flexion). Hence 
violent exercise at this time should be avoided, though there 
is no reason why a properly clad woman should not take her 
usual daily walk. 

The absence of the menstrual flow {amenorrhcea) is normal 
during pregnancy and while suckling; and in some rare cases 
it never occurs throughout life, even in healthy women capa¬ 
ble of child-bearing. Usually, however, the non-appearance 
of the menses at the proper periods is a serious symptom, and 
one which calls for prompt measures. In all such cases it 
cannot be too strongly impressed upon women that the most 
dangerous thing to do is to take drugs tending to induce the 
discharge, except under skilled advice; to excite the flow, in 
many cases, as for example occlusion of the os uteri, or in 
general cfebility (when its absence is a conservative effort of 
the system), may have the most disastrous results. 

Fertilization. As the ovum descends the Fallopian tube 
the changes of menstruation are taking place in the uterus. 
Fertilization usually takes place in a Fallopian tube. The 
spermatozoa are carried along partly, perhaps, by the contrac¬ 
tions of the muscular walls of the female cavities, but mainly 
by their own activity. Occasionally the ovum is fertilized 


660 


THE HUMAN BODY. 



before reaching the Fallopian tube and fails to enter it, giving 
rise to an extra-uterine pregnancy. 

The actual process of the fertilization of the ovum has only 
been observed in the lower animals, but there is no doubt that 
the phenomena are the same in all essentials in all cases. Some 
of the spermatozoa penetrate the zona pellucida and the head 
of one of them enters the ovum, when it grows and forms the 

male pronucleus ( mn , Fig. 192). 
This travels towards the nucleus 
of the matured ovum or female 
pronucleus, fn, and in each pro¬ 
nucleus a karyoplastic filament 
forms and breaks up into a set 
of V’s; in the pronuclei repre¬ 
sented in Fig. 192 this has not 
yet taken place, the karyoplasm 
being still arranged in a retic¬ 
ulum. The tail of the sperma¬ 
tozoon (which represents, it will 
be remembered, the protoplasm 
of a male cell) disappears; 
whether it is cast off when the 
head enters the vitellus or min¬ 
gles with the protoplasm of the 
latter is not known. As the pronuclei approach one another 
two attraction particles, p , jt?, appear in the protoplasm of the 
ovum; around these the granules of the vitellus show a radial 
arrangement and a nuclear spindle (p. 19) unites them. The 
spindle lies with its long axis at right angles to a line joining 
the pronuclei. The latter next completely fuse across the 
middle of the spindle and form a new single nucleus. Fertili¬ 
zation is then complete, and the ovum capable of dividing or 
segmenting (Fig. 11) to form the cells which by multiplication 
and differentiation build up the embryo. The zona pellucida 
takes no part in the segmentation and is gradually absorbed. 

The Signification of the Polar Globules. The union of 
the male and female pronuclei is the essential fact in fertiliza¬ 
tion and the material basis of all the phenomena of heredity; 
therefore everything pertaining to it is of very great interest. 
There is reason to believe that each half of the nucleus of the 
fertilized egg contains karyoplasm from both pronuclei, and 
that in all subsequent cell-divisions each new cell gets nuclear 


Fig. 192.—An ovum shortly before 
the fusion of the pronuclei, o, zona 
pellucida; b, polar globules;/»,. female 
pronucleus; mn, male pronucleus; pp, 
attraction bodies, with the nuclear 
spindle lying between them; s, sper¬ 
matozoa which have not taken part in 
fertilization. 


REPRODUCTION. 


661 


karyoplasm from both, and therefore contains both male and 
female morphological elements. If this be so, every cell of the 
adult Body contains a material representative of both father 
and mother, and may be regarded as hermaphrodite. Upon 
this supposition explanations of the unequal cell-divisions of 
the ovum giving rise to the polar globules have been based. 
The ovum before maturation and the spermatoblast before final 
formation of the spermatozoon being bisexual, each must, it 
has been suggested, get rid of material derived from one 
parent before it can fuse with a residuum of the other to make 
a new cell. The spermatoblast therefore in its first cell- 
division separates female nuclear matter, and the spermatozoon 
is a purely male cell; the ovum on the other hand gets rid of 
male material in the polar globules, and the mature ovum is a 
solely female cell; the union of the two makes a complete her¬ 
maphrodite cell from which the new animal develops. This 
view was supported by the belief that certain insect eggs which 
develop parthenogenetically did not separate polar globules 
before commencing to form the embryo. It is now known, 
however, that such eggs do separate one polar globule, so the 
theory requires modification. We cannot here go into the dis¬ 
cussion of this matter, which is one of the most interesting 
biological questions. The argument gathers mainly round 
the theory (Weismann) that each complete cell apart from 
male and female elements contains two kinds of living mate¬ 
rial : one ( nuclear plasma) with controlling, reproducing, and 
hereditary functions; the other ( nutritive plasma) with as¬ 
similative duties and other powers in various cells, as con¬ 
tractility, irritability, and so forth, but exercising these under 
the influence and direction of the nuclear plasma. In the 
nuclear plasma itself are two distinct substances—a germinal 
plasma with hereditary functions, and alone found in the just 
fertilized ovum, and a histogenetic or tissue-building plasma y 
which is formed by and from the germinal plasma and controls 
cell-growth, division, and differentiation. The ovum in the 
first polar globule gets rid of some of its histogenetic plasma, 
and then in the second polar globule of the male portion of 
its germinal plasma, and these are replaced by the material 
brought by the spermatozoon, which is a cell that has in a 
similar way got rid of some of its histogenetic and germinal 
plasma. On this theory, moreover, the proportion of the 
ovum extruded in the polar globules and the ratio of that 


662 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


remaining to the germ plasma brought by the spermatozoon 
may be supposed to differ in different instances and account 
for individual differences in the offspring: thus some physical 
basis for the facts of variation as well as of heredity would 
be obtained. 

Impregnation. The fertilized ovum continues its descent 
do the uterine cavity, but, instead of lying dormant like the 
unfertilized, segments (p. 29), and forms a morula. This, 
entering the womb, becomes imbedded in the soft, vascular 
mucous membrane from which it imbibes nourishment, and 
which, instead of being cast off in subsequent menstrual dis¬ 
charges, is retained and grows during the whole of pregnancy, 
having important duties to discharge in connection with the 
nutrition of the embryo. 

Sexual congress is most apt to be followed by pregnancy if 
it occur immediately after a menstrual period; at those times 
a ripe ovum is usually in the Fallopian tube, near the upper 
end of which it is probably fertilized in the majority of cases. 
There is some difference of opinion as to whether the rupture 
of the Graafian follicle occurs most frequently immediately 
before the appearance of the menstrual flow, or towards its 
close; but the preponderance of evidence favors the latter view. 
The menstrual process probably is a special preparation of the 
womb for the reception of an embryo and its nourishment. 
There is, however, evidence that ova are ocasionally discharged 
at other than the regular monthly periods of ovulation and 
may be fertilized and cause a pregnancy. 

Pregnancy. When the mulberry mass reaches the uterine 
cavity the mucous membrane lining the latter grows rapidly 
and forms a new, thick, very vascular lining to the womb, 
known as the decidua. At one point on this the morula be¬ 
comes attached, the decidua growing up around it. As preg¬ 
nancy advances and the embryo grows, it bulges out into the 
uterine cavity and pushes before it that part of the decidua 
which has grown over it (the decidua reflexa ); at about the 
end of the third month this coalesces with the decidua lining 
the opposite sides of the uterine cavity so that the two can no 
longer be separated. That part of the decidua (decidua 
serotina) against which the morula is first attached subsequently 
undergoes a great development in connection with the forma¬ 
tion of the placenta (see below). Meanwhile the whole uterus 
enlarges; its muscular coat especially thickens. At first the 


REPROD ZJCTION. 


663 


organ still lies within the pelvis, where there is but little room 
for it; it accordingly presses on the bladder and rectum (see 
Fig, 188) and the nerves in the neighborhood, frequently 
causing considerable discomfort or pain; and, reflexly, often 
exciting nausea or vomiting (the morning sickness of preg¬ 
nancy). Later on, the pregnant womb escapes higher into the 
abdominal cavity, and although then larger, the soft abdominal 
walls more readily make room for it, and less discomfort is 
usually felt, though there may be shortness of breath and 
palpitation of the heart from interference with the diaphrag¬ 
matic movements. All tight garments should at this time be 
especially avoided; the woman’s breathing is already suffi¬ 
ciently impeded, and the pressure may also injure the develop¬ 
ing child. Meanwhile, changes occur elsewhere in the Body. 
The breasts enlarge and hard masses of developing glandular 
tissue can be felt in them; and there may be mental symptoms: 
depression, anxiety, and an emotional nervous state. 

During the whole period of gestation the woman is not 
merely supplying from her blood nutriment for the foetus, but 
also, through her lungs and kidneys, getting rid of its wastes; 
the result is a strain on her whole system which, it is true, 
she is constructed to bear and will carry well if in good health, 
but which is severely felt if she be feeble or suffering from dis¬ 
ease. The healthy married woman who endeavors to evade 
motherhood because she thinks she will thus preserve her per¬ 
sonal appearance, or because she dislikes the trouble of a 
family, deserves but little sympathy; she is trying to escape a 
duty voluntarily undertaken, and owed to her husband, her 
country, and her race; but she whose strength is undermined 
and whose life is made one long discomfort for the sexual 
gratification of her husband deserves every consideration, and 
the family physician ought perhaps to warn the husband more 
frequently than'he does of the risk to a delicate wife’s health, 
or even life, of frequent pregnancies: and the husband should 
control himself accordingly. The professor of gynaecology in 
a leading medical school, gives it as his deliberate opinion 
that the majority of American women must at some periods of 
their lives choose between freedom from pregnancy or early 
death. 

Apart from pregnancy, moreover, a woman’s health is often 
injured by frequent sexual intercourse. A physician who has 
unusual opportunities of knowing states that he has reason to 


664 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


believe that not only is the act of sexual congress at best, from 
a physical point of view, a mere nuisance to the majority of 
women belonging to t,he more luxurious classes of society after 
they attain the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, but that a 
very considerable proportion suffer acute pain from it such as, 
if frequent, breaks down the general health. A loving woman, 
finding her highest happiness in suffering for those dear to her, 
is very unlikely to let her husband know this, so long as she 
can bear it; but if the possibility is known it will not, per¬ 
haps, need much acuteness in him to discover such suffering 
when it exists, nor very much real affection to direct him¬ 
self accordingly. In the class of cases referred to, rest of the 
over-irritable and congested female organs is above all essen¬ 
tial. The cause is frequently removable by simple, but skilled, 
treatment; the desirability of rendering this available to a 
woman in members of her own sex is now generally recog¬ 
nized. 

The Intra-Uterine Nutrition of the Embryo. At first 
the embryo is nourished by absorption of materials from the 
soft vascular lining of the womb; as it increases in size this 
is not sufficient, and a new organ, the placenta, is formed for 
the purpose. A foetal outgrowth, the allantois, plants itself 
firmly against the decidua serotina, and villi developed on it 
burrow from its surface into the uterine mucous membrane. 
In the deeper layer of this latter are large sinuses through 
which the maternal blood flows, and into which the allantoic 
villi project. Blood is brought from the foetus to the allantois 
by arteries and carried back by veins after traversing the 
capillaries of the villi, and while flowing through these re¬ 
ceives, by dialysis, oxygen and food materials from the mater¬ 
nal blood, and gives up to it carbon dioxide, urea, and other 
wastes. There is thus no direct intermixture of the two 
bloods; the embryo is from the first an essentially separate 
and independent organism. The allantois and decidua sero¬ 
tina becoming inseparably united together form the placenta, 
which in the human species is, when fully developed, a round 
thick mass about the size of a large saucer, connected to the 
embryo by a narrow stalk, the umbilical cord, in which blood¬ 
vessels run to and from the placenta. 

Parturition. At the end of from 275 to 280 days from 
fertilization of the ovum ( conception ) pregnancy terminates, 
and the child is expelled by powerful contractions of the 


REPRODUCTION. 


665 


uterus, assisted by those of the muscles in the abdominal 
walls. When the child is born, it has attached to its navel 
the umbilical cord, which is then usually ligatured and cut 
across: some good authorities, however, maintain that this 
should not be done until after the contractions which expel 
the placenta, as otherwise a quantity of the infant's blood 
remains in that organ; the loss of which might be serious to 
a feeble infant. Shortly after the birth of the child renewed 
uterine contractions detach and expel the placenta, both its 
foetal or allantoic and maternal or decidual part, as the after¬ 
birth. Where it is torn loose from the uterine wall large 
blood sinuses are left open; hence a certain amount of bleed¬ 
ing occurs, but in normal labor this is speedily checked by 
firm contraction of the uterus. Should this fail to take 
place profuse haemorrhage occurs ( flooding) and the mother 
may bleed to death in a few minutes unless prompt measures 
are adopted. 

For a few days after delivery there is some discharge (the 
lochia) from the uterine cavity: the whole decidua being 
broken down and carried off, to be subsequently replaced by 
new mucous membrane. The muscular fibres developed in 
the uterine wall in such large quantities during pregnancy 
undergo rapid fatty degeneration and are absorbed, and in a 
few weeks the organ returns almost to its original size. The 
parturient woman is especially apt to take infectious diseases; 
and these, should they attack her, are fatal in a very large 
percentage of cases. Very special care should therefore be 
taken to keep all contagion from her. 

There is a current impression that a pregnancy, once 
commenced, can be brought to a premature end, especially in 
its early stages, without any serious risk to the woman. That 
belief is erroneous. Premature delivery, early or late in 
pregnancy, is always more dangerous than natural labor at 
the proper term; the physician has sometimes to induce it, 
as when a malformed pelvis makes normal parturition impos¬ 
sible, or the general derangement of health accompanying 
the pregnancy is such as to threaten the mother's life; but 
the occasional necessity of deciding whether it is his duty to 
procure an abortion is one of the most serious responsibilities 
he meets with in the course of his professional work. 

Dr. Storer, an eminent gynaecologist, states emphatically. 


666 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


from extended observation, that despite apparent and isolated 
instances to the contrary— 

1. A larger proportion of women die during or in con¬ 
sequence of an abortion, than during or in consequence of 
child-bed at the full term of pregnancy. 

2. A very much larger number of women become con¬ 
firmed invalids, perhaps for life; and— 

3. The tendency to serious and often fatal organic disease, 
as cancer, is rendered very much greater at the so-called 
“turn of life,” by previous artificially induced premature 
delivery. 

During pregnancy there is a close connection between the 
placenta and uterus; nature makes preparation for the safe 
dissolution of this at the end of the normal period, but “ its 
premature rupture is usually attended by profuse haemor¬ 
rhage, often fatal, often persistent to a greater or less degree 
for many months after the act is completed, and always at¬ 
tended with more or less shock to the maternal system, even 
though the full effect of this is not noted for years.” The 
same authority states again: “ Any deviation from this proc¬ 
ess at the full term” (i.e ., the process, associated with lacta¬ 
tion, by which the uterus is restored to its small non-gravid 
dimensions) “lays the foundation of, and causes, a wide 
range of uterine accidents and disease, displacements of 
various kinds; falling of the womb downwards or forwards 
or backwards, with the long list of neuralgic pains in the 
back, groin, thighs, and elsewhere that they occasion; con¬ 
stant and inordinate leucorrhoea; sympathetic attacks of 
ovarian irritation, running even into dropsy,” etc., etc. 
There is, thus, abundant reason for bearing most things 
rather than the risks of an avoidable abortion. 

Lactation. The mammary glands for several years after 
birth remain small, and alike in both sexes. Towards 
puberty they begin to enlarge in the female, and when fully 
developed form in that sex two rounded eminences, the 
breasts, placed on the thorax. A little below the centre of 
each projects a small eminence, the nipple , and the skin 
around this forms a colored circle, the areola. In virgins 
the areolas are pink; they darken in tint and enlarge during 
the first pregnancy and never quite regain their original hue. 
The mammary glands are constructed on the compound 
racemose type. Each consists of from fifteen to twenty 


REPROP UCTION. 


667 


distinct lobes, made up of smaller divisions; from each main 
lobe a separate galactophorous duct , made by the union of 
smaller branches from the lobules, runs towards the nipple 
all converging beneath the areola. There each dilates 
and forms a small elongated reservoir in which the milk 
may temporarily collect. Beyond this the ducts’ narrow 
again, and each continues to a separate opening on the nip¬ 
ple. Imbedding and enveloping the lobes of the gland is a 
quantity of firm adipose tissue which gives the whole breast 
its rounded form. 

During maidenhood the glandular tissue remains imper¬ 
fectly developed and dormant. Early in pregnancy it begins 
to increase in bulk, and the gland lobes can be felt as hard 
masses through the superjacent skin and fat. Even at par¬ 
turition, however, their functional activity is not fully estab¬ 
lished. The oil-globules of the milk are formed by a sort of 
fatty degeneration of the gland-cells, which finally fall to 
pieces; the cream is thus set free in the watery and albu¬ 
minous secretion formed simultaneously, while newly de¬ 
veloped gland-cells take the place of those destroyed. In the 
milk first secreted after accouchment (the colostrum) the cell 
destruction is incomplete, and many cells still float in the 
liquid, which has a yellowish color; this first milk acts as a 
purgative on the infant, and probably thus serves a useful 
purpose, as a certain amount of substances (biliary and 
other), excreted by its organs during development, are found 
in the intestines at birth. 

Human milk is undoubtedly the best food for an infant in 
the early months of life; and to suckle her child is useful to 
the mother if she be a healthy woman. There is reason to 
believe that the processes of involution by which the large 
mass of muscular and other tissues developed in the uterine 
walls during pregnancy are broken down and absorbed, take 
place more safely to health if the natural milk secretion is 
encouraged. Many women refuse to suckle their children 
from a belief that so doing will injure their personal appear¬ 
ance, but skilled medical opinion is to the contrary effect; the 
natural course of events is the best for this purpose, unless 
lactation be too prolonged. Of course in many cases there are 
justifiable grounds for a mother’s not undertaking this part of 
her duties; a physician is the proper person to decide. 

In a healthy woman, not suckling her child, ovulation and 


668 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


menstruation recommence about six weeks after childbirth; a 
nursing mother usually does not menstruate for ten or twelve 
months; the infant should then be weaned. 

When an infant cannot be suckled by its mother or a wet- 
nurse an important matter is to decide what is the best food 
to substitute. Good cow’s milk contains rather more fats than 
that of a woman, and much more casein; the following table 
gives averages in 1000 parts of milk: 



Woman. 

Cow. 

Casein . 

.28.0 

54.0 

Butter. 

. 33.5 

43.0 

Milk sugar. 


42.5 

Inorganic matters. 

. . 4.75 

7.75 


The inorganic matters of human milk yield, on analysis, in 
100 parts—calcium carbonate 6.9; calcium phosphate, 70.6; 
sodium chloride, 9.8; sodium sulphate, 7.4; other salts, 5.3. 
The lime salts are of especial importance to the child, which 
has still to build up nearly all its bony skeleton. 

When undiluted cow’s milk is given to infants they rarely 
bear it well; the too abundant casein is vomited in loose 
coagula. The milk should therefore be diluted with half or, 
for very young children, even two thirds its bulk of water. 
This, however, brings down the percentage of sugar and 
butter below the proper amount. The sugar is commonly 
replaced by adding cane sugar; but sugar of milk is readily 
obtainable and is better for the purpose. If used at all it 
should, however, be employed from the first; it sweetens much 
less than cane sugar, and infants used to the latter refuse milk 
in which milk sugar is substituted. Cream from cow’s milk 
may be added to raise the percentage of fats to the normal, but 
must be perfectly fresh and only added to the milk immediately 
before it is given to the child. While milk is standing for the 
cream to rise it is very apt to turn a little sour; the amount of 
this sour milk carried off with the cream is itself no harm 
when mixed with a large bulk of fresh milk; it carries with it, 
however, some of the fungus whose development causes the 
souring, and this will rapidly develop and sour all the milk it 
is added to if the mixture be let stand. As the infant grows 
older less diluted cow’s milk may gradually be given; after 
the seventh or eighth month no addition of water is necessary. 

In the first weeks after birth it is no use to give an infant 
starchy foods, as arrowroot. The greater part of the starch 






REPRODUCTION. 


669 


passes through the bowels unchanged; apparently because the 
pancreas has not yet fully developed, and has not commenced 
to make its starch-converting ferment. Later on, starchy 
substances may be added to the diet with advantage, but it 
should be borne in mind that they cannot form the chief part 
of the child’s food; it needs proteids for the formation of 
its tissues, and amyloid foods contain none of these. Many 
infants are, ignorantly, half starved by being fed almost en¬ 
tirely on such things as corn-flour or arrowroot. 

Puberty. The condition of the reproductive organs of 
each sex described in preceding pages is that found in adults; 
although mapped out, and, to a certain extent, developed 
before birth and during childhood, these parts grow but 
slowly and remain functionally incapable during the early 
years of life; then they comparatively rapidly increase in size 
and become physiologically active; the boy or girl becomes man 
or woman. 

This period of attaining sexual maturity, known as puberty, 
takes place from the eleventh to the sixteenth year, and is 
accompanied by changes in many parts of the Body. Hair 
grows more abundantly on the pubes and genital organs, and 
in the armpits; in the male also on various parts of the face. 
The lad’s shoulders broaden; his larynx enlarges, and lengthen¬ 
ing of the vocal cords causes a fall in the pitch of his voice; 
all the reproductive organs increase in size; fully formed seminal 
fluid is secreted, and erections of the penis occur. As these 
changes are completed spontaneous nocturnal seminal emis¬ 
sions take place from time to time during sleep, being usually 
associated with voluptuous dreams. Many a young man is 
alarmed by these; he has been kept in ignorance of the whole 
matter, is too bashful to speak of it, and getting some quack 
advertisement thrust into his hand in the street is alarmed to 
learn that his strength is being drained off, and that he is on 
the high-road to idiocy and impotence unless he place himself 
in the hands of the advertiser. Lads at this period of life 
should have been taught that such emissions, when not too 
frequent and not excited by any voluntary act of their own, 
are natural and healthy. They may, however, occur too often; 
if there is any reason to suspect this, the family physician 
should be consulted, as the healthy activity of the sexual 
organs varies so much in individuals as to make it impossible 
to lay down numerical rules on the subject. The best preven- 


670 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


tives in any case are, however, not drugs, but an avoidance of 
too warm and soft a bed, plenty of muscular exercise, and 
keeping out of the way of anything likely to excite the sexual 
instincts. 

In the woman the pelvis enlarges considerably at puberty, 
and, commonly, more subcutaneous adipose tissue develops 
over the Body generally, but especially on the breasts and hips; 
consequently the contours become more rounded. The exter¬ 
nal generative organs increase in size, and the clitoris and 
nymphse become erectile. The uterus grows considerably, the 
ovaries enlarge, some Graafian follicles ripen, and menstruation 
commences. 

The Stages of Life. Starting from the ovum each human 
being, apart from accident or disease, runs through a life-cycle 
which terminates on the average after a course of from 75 to 
80 years. The earliest years are marked not only by rapid 
growth but by differentiating growth or development; then 
comes a more stationary period, and finally one of degenera¬ 
tion. The life of various tissues and of many organs is not, 
however, coextensive with that of the individual. During life 
all the formed elements of the Body are constantly being 
broken down and removed; either molecularly ( i.e ., hit by hit 
while the general size and form of the cell or fibre remains 
unaltered), or in mass, as when hairs and the cuticle are shed. 
The life of many organs, also, does not extend from birth to 
death, at least in a functionally active state. At the former 
period numerous bones are represented mainly by cartilage. 
The pancreas has not attained its full development; and some 
of the sense-organs seem to be in the same case; at least new¬ 
born infants appear to hear very imperfectly. The reproductive 
organs only attain full development at puberty, and degenerate 
and lose all or much of their functional importance as years ac¬ 
cumulate. Certain organs have even a still shorter range of 
physiological life; the thymus, for example, attains its fullest 
development at the end of the second year and then gradually 
dwindles away, so that in the adult scarcely a trace of it is to 
be found. The milk-teeth are shed in childhood, and their 
so-called permanent successors rarely last to ripe old age. 

During early life the Body increases in mass, at first very 
rapidly, and then more slowly, till the full size is attained, 
except that girls make a sudden advance in this respect at 
puberty. Henceforth the woman’s weight (excluding excep- 


REPRODUCTION. 


671 


tional cases of accumulation of non-working adipose tissue) 
remains about the same uijtil the climacteric. After that 
there is often an increase of weight for several years due 
mainly to increased formation of fat; a man’s weight usually 
slowly increases until forty. 

As old age comes on a general decline sets in, the rib car¬ 
tilages become calcified, and lime salts are laid down in the 
arterial walls, which thus lose their elasticity; the refracting 
media of the eye become more or less opaque; the physiological 
irritability of the sense-organs in general diminishes; and fatty 
degeneration, diminishing their working power, occurs in 
many tissues. In the brain we find signs of less plasticity; the 
youth in whom few lines of least resistance have been firmly 
established is ready to accept novelties and form new associa¬ 
tions of ideas; but the longer he lives, the more difficult does 
this become to him. A man past middle life may do good, 
or even his best work, but almost invariably in some line of 
thought which he has already accepted: it is extremely rare 
for an old man to take up a new study or change his views, 
philosophical, scientific, or other. Hence, as we live, we all 
tend to lag behind the rising generation. 

Death. After the prime of life the tissues dwindle (or at 
least the most important ones) as they increased in childhood; 
it is conceivable that, without death, this process might occur 
until the Body was reduced to its original microscopic dimen¬ 
sions. 

Before any great diminution takes place, however, a break¬ 
down occurs somewhere, the enfeebled community of organs 
and tissues forming the man is unable to meet the contingen¬ 
cies of life, and death supervenes. “ It is as natural to die as 
to be born,” Bacon wrote long since; but though we all 
know it, few realize the fact until the summons comes. To 
the popular imagination the prospect of dying is often asso¬ 
ciated with thoughts of extreme suffering; personifying life, 
men picture a forcible and agonizing rending of it, as an 
entity, from the bodily frame with which it is associated. As 
a matter of fact, death is probably rarely associated with any 
immediate suffering. The sensibilities are gradually dulled as 
the end approaches; the nervous tissues, with the rest, lose 
their functional capacity, and, before the heart ceases to beat, 
the individual has commonly lost consciousness. 

The actual moment of death is hard to define: that of the 


672 


THE HUMAN BODY. 


Body generally, of the mass as a whole, may be taken to he the 
moment when the heart makes its last beat; arterial pressure 
then falls irretrievably, the capillary circulation ceases, and 
the tissues, no longer nourished from the blood, gradually die, 
not all at one instant, but one after another, according as their 
individual respiratory or other needs are great or little. 

While death is the natural end of life, it is not its aim—we 
should not live to die, but live prepared to die. Life has its 
duties and its legitimate pleasures, and we better play our part 
by attending to the fulfilment of the one and the enjoyment 
of the other, than by concentrating a morbid and paralyzing 
attention on the inevitable, with the too frequent result of 
producing indifference to the work which lies at hand for each. 
Our organs and faculties are not talents which we may justifi¬ 
ably leave unemployed; each is bound to do his best with 
them, and so to live that he may most utilize them. An active, 
vigorous, dutiful, unselfish life is a good preparation for death; 
when that time, at which we must pass from the realm con¬ 
trolled by physiological laws, approaches, when the hands 
tremble and the eyes grow dim, when “ the grasshopper shall 
be a burden and desire shall fail,” then, surely, the conscious¬ 
ness of having quitted us like men in the employment of our 
faculties while they were ours to use, will be no mean consola¬ 
tion. 


INDEX. 


Abdomen, contents of, 5. 

Abdominal respiration, 393. 

Abducens nerve, 174. 

Aberration, chromatic, 527. 

Aberration, spherical, 527. 

Absorbents. 349. 

Absorption from intestines, 373. 

Absorption of gases, 405. 

Absorption of oxygen by blood, 
407 

Accelerator nerves of heart, 271. 

Accessory reproductive organs, 647. 

Accommodation, 522. 

Acetabulum, 77. 

Achromatin filaments, 20. 

Acid, acetic, 13; butyric, 13; car¬ 
bonic, see carbon dioxide; for¬ 
mic, 13 ; glycero-phosphoric, 
13 ; glycocholic, 12 ; hippuric, 
434; lactic, 13; oleic, 12; pal¬ 
mitic, 12 ; sarcolactic, 13, 123 ; 
stearic, 12 ; taurocholic, 370; 
uric, 434. 

Action current (negative varia¬ 
tion), 139. 199. 

Actions, reflex, 188, 600. 

Addison’s Disease, 359. 

Adenoid tissue, 103, 353. 

Adipose tissue, 107. 

Adrenals (supra-renal capsules), 
359. 

Advantage of mixed diet, 326, 474. 

After-birth (placenta), 665. 

After images, 548. 

Air, chemical composition of, 400. 

Air-cells, 383. 

Air, changes produced in, by 
breathing, 399. 

Air, eomplemental, tidal, etc., 392. 

Air-passages, 381. 

Albumin, serum, 59. 


Albuminoids (gelatinoids), 10, 319. 

Albuminous bodies, 9. 

Albumose, 366. 

Alcohol, 323. 

Alimentary canal. 328. 

Alimentary principles, 319. 

Amoeboid cells, 110. 

Amoeboid movements, 23, 48. 

Amyloids (carbohydrates), 12, 319. 

Amyloids, digestion of, 362, 368, 
375. 

Anabolism, 22. 

Anaemia, 60. 

Anatomical systems, 39. 

Anatomy of alimentary canal, 328; 
of brain, 166, 610; of ear, 557; 
of eye, 504; of joints, 92; of 
lymphatic system, 349; of mus¬ 
cular system, 112; of nervous 
system, 158, 172; of respiratory 
organs, 380; of skeleton, 63; of 
skin, 441; of urinary organs, 
427; of vascular system, 211. 

Animal heat, source of, 477. 

Anvil bone, 558. 

Agraphia, 628. 

Aorta, 215, 219. 

Aphasia, 628 

Apoplexy, 170. 

Appendicular skeleton, 77. 

Appendix vermiformis, 342. 

Appetite, 377. 

Aqueduct of Sylvius, or iter, 171, 
618. 

Aqueous humor, 516. 

Arachnoid, 5, 161. 

Arbor vitae, 171. 

Area, motor, 623. 

Areolar tissue, 100. 

Areolar tissue, subcutaneous, 442. 

Arm, skeleton of, 77. 


673 




674 


INDEX. 


Arterial blood, 225, 404. 

Arterial pressure, 242, 267. 

Arteries, distribution of, 218. 
Arteries, structure of, 225. 

Artery, axillary, 219 ; brachial, 
219; bronchial, 220; carotid, 
219; cceliac, 220; coronary, 216, 
219; femoral, 220; hepatic, 345; 
iliac, 220 ; innominate, 219 ; in¬ 
tercostal, 220 ; mesenteric, 220 ; 
radial, 219 ; renal, 220, 427 ; 
subclavian, 219; ulnar, 219; ver¬ 
tebral, 219. 

Articular cartilage, 92. 
Articulations, 64, 91. 

Arytenoid cartilages, 635. 
Ascending antero-lateral tract, 598. 
Asphyxia, 422. 

Aspiration of thorax, 251, 393. 
Assimilation, 22. 

Assimilative tissues, 32. 

Associated movements, 631. 
Association of ideas, 631. 
Astigmatism, 528. 

Astragalus, 81. 

Atlanto-axial articulation, 95. 

Atlas vertebra, 69. 

Attraction particle, 19. 

Auditory nerve, 174. 

Auditory ossicles, 558. 

Auditory perceptions, 574. 
Augmentor nerve-fibres, 270. 
Auriculo-ventricular valves, 217. 
Automatic centres, 189. 

Automatic movements, 25. 
Automatic tissues, 34. 

Automatism of heart, 258. 

Axial current, 235. 

Axial ligament, 559. 

Axial skeleton, 64, 67. 

Axillary artery, 219. 

Axis vertebra, 69. 

Axis, visual, 541. 

Ball-and-socket joints, 94. 
Basement membrane, 103, 283. 
Basilar membrane, 561, 573. 
Bathing, 449. 

Beat of heart, 227, 258. 

Beef-tea, 125. 

Biceps muscle of arm, 113. 

Bile, 370. 

Bilirubin, 357, 370. 

Blackness, sensation of, 542. 
Bladder, urinary, 427. 

Blind spot, 532. 

Blood, 41 ; arterial and venous, 
225, 380; composition of, 59; 
clotting of, 51; crystals, 47; 


gases of, 404; histology of, 44 ; 
laky, 46 ; quantity of, 61; se¬ 
rum, 51. 

Blood corpuscles, 44, 60. 

Blood-flow in capillaries, 234; in 
kidneys, 431 ; in liver, 347. 
Blood-vessels, anatomy of, 211. 
Blood-vessels, nerves of, 273. 
Blood-vessels, structure of, 225. 
Blushing, 277. 

Bone, composition of, 89; histology 
of, 87; gross structure of, 85. 
Bones of face, 75; of fore-limb, 
77; of hind-limb, 78; of pectoral 
arch, 77; of pelvic arch, 77; of 
skull, 72. 

Brachial artery, 219. 

Brachial plexus, 164. 

Brain, anatomy of, 166, 610; physi¬ 
ology of, 609; membranes of, 
160. 

Bread, 323. 

Breast-bone, 72. 

Bronchial arteries, 220. 

Bronchial tubes, 382. 

Bronchus, 382. 

Brunner’s glands, 341. 

Buccal cavity, 328. 

Buffy coat on blood-clot, 52. 

Caecum, 342. 

Calcaneum, 79. 

Calcium salts, relation to blood¬ 
clotting, 55; to heart-beat, 271. 
Camera obscura, 521. 

Canals, semicircular, 560, 563, 574, 
615. 

Capacity of lungs, 391. 

Capillaries, blood, 220, 226. 
Capillaries, lymphatic, 352. 
Capillary circulation, 234. 

Capsule, internal, 619. 

Capsule of Glisson, 345. 
Carbamide, see Urea. 
Carbohydrates, see Amyloids. 
Carbon dioxide, 13; in blood, 411; 

production of, in muscle, 457. 
Carbon monoxide litemoglobin, 422. 
Cardiac impulse, 228. 

Cardiac muscular tissue, 123, 255. 
Cardiac nerves, 257. 

Cardiac orifice of stomach, 338. 
Cardiac plexus, 176. 
Cardio-inhibitory nerves, 264, 269. 
Carotid artery, 219. 

Carpus, 77. 

Casein, 10. 

Casei nogen, 10. 

Cartilage, 98; articular, 92: elas 




INDEX. 


675 


tic, 104 ; fibro-, 104 ; histology 
of, 99 ; inter-articular, 104. 

Cartilages of larynx, 634. 

Cataract, 528. 

Cauda equina, 164. 

Caudate nucleus, 619. 

Cells, 17; amoeboid, 110; ciliated; 
35, 110; division of, 18; differ¬ 
entiation of, 29 ; growth of, 17 ; 
oxyntic, 338 ; secretory, 288; 
vaso-motor, 273. 

Cement, of tooth, 331. 

Central fissure, 623. 

Centre, cardio-inhibitory, 269; 
cerebro-spinal, 5, 159; convul¬ 
sive, 424; respiratory, 414. 

Centre of gravity of body, 149. 

Centres, nerve, general functions 
of, 188. 

Centrosome, 19. 

Cephalic vein, 222. 

Cerebellar tract, 598. 

Cerebellum, 167, 613. 

Cerebral cortex, 622 ; motor areas 
in, 623; sensory areas in, 629. 

Cerebral hemispheres, 166. 

Cerebral hemispheres, functions 
of, 622. 

Cerebral localization, 623. 

Cerebral ventricles, 168 

Cerebro-spinal centre, 5, 159. 

Cerebro-spinal liquid, 161, 169. 

Cervical plexus, 164. 

Cervical vertebrae, 68. 

Characteristics of human skeleton, 
83. 

Chemical changes in breathed air, 
399. 

Chemical combinations, energy 
liberated in, 304. 

Chemical composition of body, 7. 

Chemistry, of bile, 370; of blood, 
59 ; of bone, 89; of fats, 108; of 
gastric juice, 365; of lymph, 62; 
of muscle, 123, 457; of pancreatic 
secretion, 368; of respiration, 
3S8 ; of secretion, 287; of teeth, 
331 ; of urine, 433 ; of white 
fibrous tissue, 102 ; of working 
muscle, 454. 

Chest, see Thorax. 

Chondrin, 11. 

Chorda tympani nerve, 293. 

Choroid, 510. 

Choroid plexus, 169. 

Chromatic aberration, 527. 

Chromoplasm, 19. 

Chyle, 367. 

Chyme, 367. 


Ciliary muscle, 516, 524. 

Ciliary, processes, 510. 

Ciliated cells, 110. 

Circulation, 211, 223, 234; during 
asphyxia, 423 ; influence of re¬ 
spiratory movements on, 394; in¬ 
fluence of nerves on, 253; portal, 
223, 347; pulmonary, 223; renal, 
431. 

Circulatory organs, 211. 
Circumvallate papillae, 333. 
Classification of the tissues, 31. 
Classification of nerve-fibres, 191. 
Clavicle, 77. 

Clothing, 486. 

Coagulated proteid, 10. 

Coagulation of blood, 51. 

Coccyx, 71. 

Cochlea, 560, 573. 

Coeliac axis, 220. 

Cold-blooded animals, 477. 
Collagen, 105. 

Collar-bone, 77. 

Colon, 342. 

Color blindness, 545. 

Color mixing, 543. 

Color vision, 541. 

Comma tract, 598. 

Combustible foods, 453. 
Commissure, optic, 512. 
Commissures, cerebral, 170, 620. 
Common bile-duct, 344. 

Common sensation, 490, 585, 587. 
Complemental air, 392. 
Complementary colors, 543. 
Concba, 557. 

Conduction in spinal cord, 594, 599 
Conductive tissues, 35 
Conductivity, physiological, 24. 
Congestion, 487. 

Conjunctiva, 506. 

Connective tissue, 63, 100, 106. 
Connective-tissue corpuscles, 102. 
Conservation of energy, 302. 
Consonants, 642. 

Contractile tissues, 35, 117. 
Contractility, 23, 127. 

Contraction, muscular, 130. 
Contrasts, visual, 547. 

Convulsive centre, 424. 

Cooking of meats, 321 ; of vege 
tables, 323. 

Co-ordinating tissues, 34. 
Co-ordination, 24, 188. 

Cord, spinal, 161, 594. 

Cords, vocal, 635. 

Corium, 6, 442. 

Corn, 322. 

Cornea, 509. 





676 


INDEX. 


Coronary artery, 216; sinus, 215. 
Corpora albicantia, 173. 

Corpora geniculata, 617. 

Corpora quadrigemina, 167, 617. 
Corpora striata, 167, 618. 

Corpus callosum, 170. 

Corpuscles of blood, red, 44 ; color¬ 
less, 47; platelets, 49. 
Corresponding retinal points, 554. 
Cortex of cerebrum, 622. 

Corti, organ of, 562. 

Costal cartilages, 72. 

Costal respiration, 393. 

Coughing, 425. 

Cranial nerves, 172. 

Cranium, 73. 

Cream, 322. 

Cretinism, 358. 

Cricoid cartilage, 634. 

Crura cerebri, 167. 

Crying, 426. 

Crypts of Lieberkiihn, 341. 
Crystalline lens, 516. 

Curare poisoning, 129. 

Cutaneous secretions, 447. 

Cutis vera, 442. 

Cystic duct, 344. 

Daltonism, 546. 

Death, 671. 

Death stiffening, 123, 457. 

Defects (optical) of eye, 525, 526. 
Degeneration of nerve-fibres, 209. 
Degenerations, in brain, 619 ; in 
spinal cord, 596. 

Deglutition, 363. 

Dentine, 331. 

Depressor nerve, 276. 

Dermis, 5, 576. 

Descemet, membrane of, 510. 
Deutoplasm, 26. 

Development, 29. 

Diabetes, 355, 470 
Dialysis, 42. 

Diapedesis, 281. 

Diaphragm, 4, 386. 

Dietetics, 474. 

Diet, mixed, advantages of, 325. 
Differentiation of the tissues, 29. 
Digestion, 361. 

Digestion of a typical meal, 375. 
Diploe. 89. 

Dislocation, 96. 

Dispersion of light, 519. 
Dissimilation, 22. 

Distance, perception of, 552, 574. 
Division of physiological employ¬ 
ments, 30. 

Dorsal (neural) cavity, 5. 


Dorsal (thoracic) vertebrae, 66. 
Drum of ear, 557. 

Ductless glands, 354. 

Duodenum, 339. 

Dura mater, 160. 

Duration of luminous sensations, 
539. 

Dyspepsia, 377. 

Ear, 557. 

Eggs, 321. 

Elasticity of muscle, 137. 

Elastic cartilage, 104. 

Elastic tissue, 102. 

Electrical currents, of muscle, 138; 
of nerve, 198. 

Elements found in body, 8. 
Eliminative (excretory) tissues, 32. 
Emmetropia, 525. 

Emulsification, 369. 

Enamel, 331. 

End bulbs, 576. 

Endocardium, 213. 

En do-lymph, 560. 

Endo-skeleton, 63. 

End plates, 121. 

Energy, conservation of, 302 ; ki¬ 
netic, 303; lost from body daily, 
300, 480; of chemical affinity, 
304; potential, 303 ; muscular, 
source of, 140, 454; source of, 
in body, 304 ; utilization of, in 
body, 310. 

Energy-yielding foods, 452. 
Enzymes, 11, 363. 

Epidermis, 5, 441. 

Epiglottis, 634. 

Epithelium, 6, 36. 

Epithelium, ciliated, 110. 
Equilibrium sensations, 614, 

Erect posture, 149. 

Ethmoid bone, 75. 

Eustachian tube, 558. 

Excretion, 282. 

Exercise, 154. 

Exoskeleton, 63. 

Expiration, 390. 

Expiratory centre, 421. 

External auditory meatus, 557. 
External ear, 557. 

External respiration, 380. 

Extrinsic reference of sensations, 
501. 

Eye, 504; appendages of, 505; op¬ 
tical defects of, 526 ; physiology 
of, 530 ; refraction of light in, 
521. 

Eyeball, 509. 

Eyeball, muscles of, 507. 




INDEX. 


677 


Eyelids, 506. 

Facial nerve, 174. 

False vocal cords, 635. 

Fat, 12, 108. 

Fat, source of, in body, 472. 
Fatigue of retina, 546. 

Fatty tissue, 107. 

Fauces, 335. 

Fechner’s law, 499. 

Feeding of infants, 667. 

Femoral artery, 220. 

Femur, 78, 93. 

Ferments, 11, 363. 

Fertilization, 659. 

Fever, 485. 

Fibrin, 10, 52, 54. 

Fibrin ferment, 55. 

Fibrinogen, 10, 54. 

Fibro cartilage, 104. 

Fibula, 79. 

Fick and Wislecenus, 455. 
Filiform papillae, 334. 

Flesh foods, 321. 

Follicles of hairs, 444. 

Fontanelles, 92. 

Food of plants, 315. 

Foods, definition of, 317; energy 
yielding, 452; fleshy, 321 ; non- 
oxidizable, 316, 320; tissue- 

forming, 313, 452; vegetable, 
322. 

Foot, skeleton of, 79. 

Foramen, intervertebral, 71; mag¬ 
num, 75; of Monro, 171, 619; 
oval, 558 ; round, 558; thyroid, 
78; vertebral. 68. 

Forebrain, 166, 609, 618. 

Forelimb, skeleton of, 77. 

Fornix, 170. 

Frog, heart of, 256. 

Frontal bone, 75. 

Fuel of body, 308. 

Fundamental physiological actions, 
28. 

Fungiform papillae, 333. 

Fur on tongue, 334. 

Gall bladder, 344. 

Ganglia, 160, 175, 176, 184; of 
cranial nerves, 175; of heart, 
257, 263 ; of spinal nerve-roots, 
163, 184; sporadic, 176. 
Ganglion, Gasserian, 174 ; spinal, 
184. 

Gases of blood, 404. 

Gasserian ganglion, 174. 

Gastric digestion, 366. 

Gastric glands, 338. 


Gastric juice, 365. 

Gelatin, 11. 

Gelatinoids, 10, 319. 

Gemmation, 644. 

Glands, 284. 

Glenoid fossa, 77. 

Gliding joints, 96. 

Glisson. capsule of, 346. 

Globe of eye. 509. 

Globulin, 10, 47. 

Glossopharyngeal nerve, 174. 
Glottis, 635. 

Glucose (grape sugar), 12. 

Gluten, 322. 

Glycerine 12. 

Glycocholic acid, 12. 

Glycogen, 12, 406. 

Gmelin’s test, 370. 

Goitre, 357. 

Golgi’s tendon organs, 122. 

Grape sugar, 12. 

Great omentum, 339. 

Growth, 17. 

Gullet, 336. 

Haemal (ventral) cavity, 4, 6. 
Haematin, 12, 47. 

Hsematoblasts, 62. 

Haemoglobin, 46, 405. 

Hairs, 444. 

Hair-cells, 562. 

Hammer-bone, 558. 

Hand, skeleton of, 77. 

Haversian canals, 87. 

Hearing, 557. 

Heart, 213, 271; beat of, 227, 256, 
262 ; nerves of, 253. 

Heat production and regulation in 
Body, 477. 

Heat lost from lungs, 399. 
Heel-bone, 79. 

Hemianopia, 512. 

Hemispheres, cerebral, 166 ; func¬ 
tions of, 622. 

Hensen, band of, 119. 

Hepatic artery, 343. 

Hepatic cells, 344, 467. 

Hepatic duct, 344. 

Hepatic veins, 224,, 344. 

Heredity, theories of, 661. 

Ilering’s theory of color vision, 
548 

Hiccough, 425. 

Hind limb, skeleton of, 78. 

Hinge joints, 95. 

Hip-joint, 92. 

Hippuric acid, 434. 

Histology, 1 ; of adipose tissue 
107; of areolar tissue, 100; of 



678 


INDEX. 


blood, 44; of bone, 87; of cardiac 
muscle, 123 ; of cartilage, 99 ; of 
connective tissues, 100 ; of ear, 
561 ; of elastic issue, 102; of 
hairs, 444; of heart, 123; of kid¬ 
ney, 429; of liver, 344; of lungs, 
383, of lymph, 49; of lymph 
glands, 352; of nails, 445; of 
nerve-cells, 179, 184 ; of nerve- 
fibres, 176; of nose, 588; of 
plain muscular tissue, 122; of 
skin, 441; of small intestine, 
339; of retina, 511; of spinal 
cord, 181; of stomach, 122, 337; 
of striped muscle, 117; of teeth, 
331; of tactile organs, 576; of 
tongue, 589; of white fibrous 
tissue. 101. 

Homologies of supporting tissues, 
105. 

Homology, 68; of limbs, 80. 

Horopter, 554. 

Humerus, 77, 86. 

Humor, aqueous, 516; vitreous, 
516. 

Hunger, 587. 

Hyaloplasm, 19, 120. 

Hydrocarbons. See Fats. 

Hydrogen, 9. 

Hygiene, 1; of blood, 60; of brain, 
632; of clothing, 392, 486; of 
exercise, 153 ; of eye, 525; of 
growing skeleton, 90, 106; of 
joints, 96 of muscles, 153 ; of 
respiration, 392, 401 ; of sight, 
525 ; of skeleton, 90; of skin, 
448; of supporting tissues, 106. 

Hyoid bone, 76. 

Hypermetropia, 525. 

Hypoglossal nerve, 175. 

Ideas, association of, 631. 

Idio-retinal light, 531. 

Ileum, 339. 

Ileo colic valve, 342. 

Iliac artery, 220. 

Ilium, 77. 

Illusions, sensory, 502. 

Images, after, 548. 

Impulse, cardiac, 228. 

Impregnation, 662. 

Impulse, nervous, 203. 

Incus, 558. 

Indigestion, 377. 

Inert layer, 235. 

Inferior laryngeal nerve, 420. 

Inferior maxillary nerve, 174. 

Inferior mesenteric artery, 220. 

Inferior vena cava, 215. 


Inflammation, 280. 

Infundibulum, 171. 

Inhibition of reflexes, 606. 
Inhibitory nerves, 190. 

Innervation sensations, 591. 
Innominate artery, 219. 

Innominate bone, 77. 

Innominate vein, 223. 

Inogen, 141. 

Inorganic constituents of Body, 13; 

foods, 320. 

Inosit, 13. 

Inspiration, how effected, 385. 
Intensity of sensations, 499. 
Interarticular cartilage, 104. 
Intercostal arteries, 220. 

Intercostal muscles, 388. 

Internal ear. 559. 

Internal medium, 40. 

Internal respiration, 411. 
Intervertebral disks, 92. 
Intervertebral foramina, 71. 
Intestinal digestion, 372; move¬ 
ments, 378. 

Intestines, 339. 

Intrinsic heart-nerves, 257, 263. 
Intussusception, 18. 

Iris, 510. 

Irritability, 23. 

Irritability, muscular, 128. 
Irritable tissues, 33. 

Ischium, 77. 

Iter, 618. 

Jaw-bones, 75. 

Jejunum, 339. 

Jelly-like connective tissue, 103. 
Joints, 92. 

Jugular vein, 223. 

Karyokinesis, 18. 

Karyoplasm, 19. 

Katabolism, 22. 

Kidneys, 427. 

Kinetic energy, 303. 

Knee-cap or knee-pan, 79. 

Kreatin, 11, 123, 460. 

Labyrinth, 560. 

Lachrymal apparatus, 507. 
Lachrymal bone, 76. 

Lactation, 666. 

Lacteals, 44, 341. 

Lactose, 13. 

Lacunae, lymphatic, 350. 

Lamina spiralis, 561. 

Large intestine, 342, 374. 
Laryngeal nerves, 420. 

Larynx, 634. 



INDEX. 


679 


Laughing, 426. 

Law, the psycho-physical, 499. 
Leaping, 153. 

Least-resistance hypothesis, 603. 
Lecithin, 13, 321. 

Lens, crystalline, 516. 

Lenses, refraction of light by, 520. 
Lenticular nucleus, 619. 

Leucin, 368. 462. 

Leucocytes, 49. 

Levers in the Body, 145. 
Lieberkiihn. crypts of, 341. 

Liebig’s classification of foods, 453. 
Liebig’s extract, 125. 

Ligament, round, 93. 

Ligament, suspensory, of lens, 516, 
524. 

Ligaments, 93. 

Light, dispersion of, 519. 

Light, properties of, 516. 

Light, refraction of, 518. 

Limbs, 7. 

Limbs, skeleton of, 77. 

Liquid extract of meat, 125. 

Liquor sanguinis, 44. 

Liver, 344; glycogenic function of, 
466; histology of, 346, 467. 

Local sign of sensations, 492. 

Local temperatures, 484. 
Localization of cerebral functions, 
623. 

Localizing powers of retina, 539. 
Localizing power of skin, 580. 
Locomotion, 151. 

Locus niger, 616. 

Long saphenous vein, 222. 

Long sight, 525. 

Losses of energy daily, 301, 480. 
Losses of material from Body, 299. - 
Lower maxilla, 75. 

Lumbar plexus, 165. 

Lumbar vertebrae, 69. 

Lungs, 383. 

Lungs, capacity of, 391. 

Luxus consumption, 459, 462. 
Lymph, 42; canaliculi, 103, 351 ; 
chemistry of, 62; hearts, 353; 
histology of, 49; lacunae, 350; 
movement of, 353, 397; renewal 
of, 42; vessels, 43, 350. 

Lymphatic glands, 352. 

Lymphatic system, 349. 

Lymphoid tissue, 49, 351. 

Macula lutea, 511, 

Malar bone, 76. 

Malleus, 558. 

Malpighian corpuscles of spleen, 
357. 


Malpighian layer of epidermis, 441, 
Malpighian pyramids of kidney, 
429. 

Maltose, 362. 

Mammalia, 4. 

Mandible, 75. 

Manometer, 267. 

Marrow of bone, 87. 

Marrow, spinal (spinal cord), 160, 
181, 594. 

Material daily losses of Body, 299. 
Maxilla, 75. 

Measurement of arterial pressure, 
266. 

Meatus, external auditory, 557. 
Mechanisms, physiological, 38. 
Media, refracting, in eye, 515. 
Median posterior tract, 598. 
Medulla oblongata, 167, 610. 
Medullary cavity, 87. 

Membrane, basilar, 561; of Desce- 
met, 510; of Krause, 119; retic¬ 
ular, 563; synovial, 93; tectorial, 
563; tympanic, 558. 
Menstruation, 658. 

Mesentery, 339. 

Metabolic tissues, 33, 288. 
Metacarpus, 77. 

Metatarsus, 79. 

Microscopic anatomy, 2, see Histol¬ 
ogy. 

Mid-brain, functions of, 616. 
Midriff, see Diaphragm. 

Migration, 281. 

Milk, 322; for infants, 667. 
Millon’s test, 9. 

Mitosis, 18. 

Mixed diet, advantage of, 325. 
Modality of sensation, 492, 494. 
Modiolus, 561. 

Monro, foramen of, 171, 619. 
Morula, 29. 

Motion, 144. 

Motor area of cortex, 623. 

Motor organs, 109. 

Motor tissues, 35. 

Motores oculi, 172. 

Mouth, 329. 

Movements, associated, 63, 593; 
voluntary, 622. 

Movements, intestinal, 378 ; re¬ 
spiratory, 385. 

Mucin, 11. 

Mucous layer of epidermis, 441. 
Mucous membranes, 6, 339, 341. 
Mulberry mass, 29. 

Mumps, 334. 

Muscse volit.antes, 529. 

Muscle, biceps, 113; cardiac, 123, 



680 


INDEX. 


255, 262; ciliary, 516; stape¬ 
dius, 559; tensor tympani, 559. 

Muscles, chemistry of, 123, 457; 
histology of, 117, 122; of eyeball, 
507, of larynx, 637; of respi¬ 
ration, 387; physiology of, 127; 
skeletal, 113; structure of, 112, 
117; visceral, 122. 

Muscle spindle, 121. 

Muscular contraction, 130. 

Muscular energv, source of, 140. 

Muscular sense, 591. 

Muscular tissue, 35, 117, 123, 
127. 

Muscular work, 135, 454. 

Myocardium, 256. 

Myopia, 525. 

Myosin, 10, 124. 

Myosinogen, 124. 

Nails, 445. 

Nasal bone, 76. 

Negative variation, 139, 199. 

Nerve-cells, 179. 

Nerve-centres, 158, 181, 594. 

Nerve-fibres, 35, 176. 

Nerve-fibres, classification of, 191. 

Nerve plexuses, 158. 

Nerve stimuli, 194. 

Nerve trunks, 158. 

Nerves, 158; accelerator or aug- 
mentor, 270; cranial, 172, 207; 
cardiac, 253, 264; laryngeal, 

420 ; optic, 512 ; respiratory, 
414; secretory, 292; spinal, 163; 
sympathetic, 160, 175; thermo¬ 
genic, 484; trophic, 192, 295; 
vaso-constrictor, 273; vaso-dila- 
tor, 279, 293; vaso-motor, 273, 
280. 

Nervous impulses, 203. 

Nervous system, anatomy of, 158. 

Nervous system, physiology of, 
186. 

Neural tube (dorsal cavity), 5. 

Neurilemma, 177. 

Neuroglia, 180. 

Nitrogenous compounds in body, 
9. 

Nodal points of eye, 530. 

Noises, 564. 

Non-vascular tissues, 41. 

Notes, musical, 564. 

Nuclear spindle, 20. 

Nuclein, 27. 

Nucleo-albumins, 28. 

Nucleolus, 17, 19. 

Nucleoplasm, 19. 

Nucleus, 17, 20. 


Nucleus, caudate, 619; lenticular, 
619. 

Nucleus, red, of mid-brain, 617. 
Nutrition, 451. 

Nutrition of embryo, 664. 

Nutritive tissues, 32. 

Nystagmus, 614. 

Occipital bone, 75. 

Oculo-motor nerves, 172. 

Odontoid process, 95. 

Odorous bodies, 588. 

(Esophagus, 336. 

Olecranon, 81. 

Olein. 12. 

Olfactory lobe, 167. 

Olfactory nerves, 172. 

Olfactory organs, 588. 

Omentum, 339. 

Ophthalmic nerve, 174. 

Optical defects of eye, 526. 

Optic commissure, 512. 

Optic nerves, 172, 512. 

Optic thalami, 167, 170, 618. 

Optic tracts, 512. 

Organ of Corti, 562. 

Organs, 1, 36; of animal life, 110; 
of circulation, 211; of common 
sensation, 587; of digestion, 328; 
of movement, 109; of relation, 
110; of reproduction, 647; of 
respiration, 380; of secretion, 
282; of special sense. 490, 493; 
urinary, 427; of vegetative life, 
110 . 

Os calcis, 79. 

Os innominatum, 77. 

Os orbiculare, 559. 

Os pubis, 79. 

Osmazome, 321. 

Ossicles, auditory, 558. 

Otoliths, 564. 

Oval foramen, 558. 

Ovary, 652, 655. 

Over-tones (upper partial tones), 
568. 

Ovulation, 658. 

Ovum, 29, 656. 

Oxidation by stages, 309. 
Oxidations in the body, 307, 451, 
454. 

Oxygen in the blood, 407. 

Oxygen consumed daily, 400. 

Oxyhaemoglobin, 405. 

Oxyntic cells, 338. 

Pacinian bodies, 576, 578. 

Pain, 585. 

Palate, 329. 




INDEX. 


681 


Palate bones, 75. 

Palmatin, 12. 

Pancreas, 290, 346, 358. 

Pancreatic secretion, 368. 

Papillary muscles, 217, 230. 
Papillae of tongue, 334. 
Paraglobulin, 10, 54. 

Parapeptone, 366. 

Paraplasm, 26. 

Parietal bone, 75. 

Parotid gland, 296, 334. 

Partial tones, 568. 

Parturition, 664. 

Patella, 79. 

Patbeticus, 173. 

Pathology, 1. 

Peas, 323. 

Pectoral arch, 77. 

Pelvic arch, 77. 

Pendular vibrations, 565; 

Pepsin, 365. 

Peptones, 10, 365, 372. 
Perceptions, 500; visual, 552 ; 

auditory, 574. 

Pericardium, 213. 

Perichondrium, 98. 

Perilymph, 560. 

Perimysium, 117. 

Perineurium, 177. 

Periosteum, 85. 

Peripheral reference of sensations, 
491, 501. 

Peristaltic movements, 365. 
Peritoneum, 5, 337. 

Pes of crus cerebri, 616. 
Pettenkofer’s test, 370. 

Peyer’s patches, 352. 

Phagocytes, 48. 

Phalanges of fingers and toes, 77, 
79. 

Pharynx, 335. 

Phrenic nerve, 165, 390. 
Physiological chemistry, 8. 
Physiological mechanisms, 38. 
Physiological properties, 16. 
Physiology, 1; of blood-vessels, 
227? of brain, 609; of connective 
tissues, 102; of digestion, 361: 
of ear, 561, 571; of eye, 530; of 
heart, 253; of kidneys, 435; of 
muscles, 127, 144; of nerves, 
186; of nerve-centres, 186, 594; 
of nutrition, 451; of respiration, 
385, 398, 414; of skin, 446, 578; 
of smell, 587; of spinal cord, 
594; of taste, 589; of touch, 578. 
Pia mater, 160. 

Pineal gland, 171. 

Pitch of notes, 564. 


Pitch of voice, 640. 

Pituitary body. 171, 359. 
Pivot-joints, 95. 

Placenta, 665. 

Plain muscular tissue, 123, 142. 
Plastic foods. 453. 

Platelets, or plaques of blood, 49. 
Pleura. 5, 383. 

Plexus, 158; brachial, 164; car¬ 
diac, 176; cervical. 164; choroid, 
169; lumbar, 165; sacral, 166; 
solar, 176. 

Pneumogastric nerves, 174, 264, 
419. 

Polar globules, 660. 

Pons Varolii, 167, 613. 

Popliteal artery, 220. 

Portal circulation, 223, 347. 

Portal vein, 343. 

Posterior tibial artery, 220. 
Postures, 149. 

Potatoes, 323. 

Potential energy, 303. 

Pregnancy, 662. 

-Presbyopia, 526. 

Pressure, arterial, 242. 

Pressure, intra-thoracic, 384. 
Pressure sense, 578. 

Primates, 2. 

Production of heat in body, 477. 
Pronation, 96. 

Proofs of circulation, 251. 

Prostate, 649. 

Protective tissues, 36. 

Proteids, 9, 314, 453. 

Proteids, oxidation of, 455. 
Protoplasm, 19. 26. 

Psychical activities of cord, 607. 
Psycho-physical law, 499. 

Ptosis, 509. 

Ptyalin, 362. 

Pubertv, 669. 

Pubis, 77. 

Pulmonary artery, 214. 

Pulmonary circulation, 223. 
Pulmonary veins, 216. 

Pulse, 246. 

Purkinje’s experiment, 533. 

Pus, 48. 

Pylorus, 336, 338. 

Pyramidal tracts, 597. 

Pyramids of Malpighi, 429. 
Pyrexia, 485. 

Qualities of sensation, 491. 
Quantity of air breathed daily, 392. 
Quantity of blood, 61. 

Quantity of food needed daily, 326, 
476. 



682 


INDEX. 


Radial artery, 219. 

Radio-ulnar articulation, 95. 
Radius, 77. 

Range of voice, 640. 

Rate of blood flow, 248. 
Receptaculum chyli, 350. 
Receptive tissues, 32. 

Rectum, 342. 

Red blood-corpuscles, 44, 60. 
Reduced haemoglobin, 405. 

Reflex actions, 188, 600. 

Reflex convulsions, 602. 

Reflex time, 608. 

Reflexes, acquired, 613. 

Reflexes, inhibition of, 606. 
Refracting media of eye, 515. 
Refraction of lenses, 520. 
Refraction of light, 518. 

Refraction in the eye, 521. 
Regulation of temperature, 482. 
Renal artery, 220, 427. 

Renal organs, 427. 

Renal secretion, 432. 

Rennet, 365. 

Reproduction, 22, 644. 
Reproductive tissues, 36. 

Residual air, 392. 

Resistance theory, 419. 

Resonance, sympathetic, 569. 
Respiration, 22, 380. 

Respiration, chemistry of, 398. 
Respiration, nerves of, 414. 
Respiratory centre, 414. 
Respiratory foods, 453. 

Respiratory movements, 385; influ¬ 
ence of, on circulation and on 
flow of lymph, 394. 

Respiratory sounds, 391. 

Reticular membrane, 563. 
Reticulum of cells, 19. 

Retiform (adenoid) connective tis¬ 
sue, 103. 

Retina, 511, 514. 

Rhythmic movements, 417. 

Ribs, 72. 

Rib cartilage, 72. 

Rice. 323. 

Right lymphatic duct, 350. 

Rigor mortis, 123, 457. 

Rods and cones, 513, 532. 

Rolando, fissure of, 623. • 

Round foramen, 558. 

Running, 152. 

Sacculus, 561. 

Sacral plexus, 166. 

Sacral vertebrae, 69. 

Sacrum, 69. 

Saliva, uses of, 361. 


[ Salivary glands. 363. 

I Salivary glands, nerves of, 293. 
Salivin (ptyalin), 362. 

Santorini, cartilages of, 635. 
Sarcolactic acid, 13, 123. 
Sarcolemma, 118. 

Sarcomere, 119. 

Sarcoplasm, 120. 

Sarcous element, 120. 

Sarcosome, 120. 

Sarcostyle, 119. 

Scalse of cochlea, 561. 

Scalene muscles, 388. 

Scapula, 77. 

Sciatic nerve, 166. 

Sclerotic, 509. 

Sebaceous glands, 446. 

Secondary (acquired) reflexes, 6131 
Secretion, 282. 

Secretion, cutaneous, 447. 
Secretion, renal, 432. 

Secretory nerves, 292. 

Secretory tissues, 32, 283. 

Sections of Body, 6. 

Segmentation of ovum, 29. 
Segmentation of skeleton, 67. 
Semicircular canals, 560, 563, 574, 
615. 

Semilunar valves, 217. 

Sensation. 488; color, 541; com¬ 
mon, 490, 585; intensity of, 499; 
of equilibrium, 614; of hunger, 
587; special, 490; of thirst, 587; 
pain, 585; peripheral reference 
of, 491, 501; qualities of, 491. 
Sense-organs, 493. 

Sense, muscular, 591; of hearing, 
557; of pain, 585; of sight, 530; 
of smell, 587; of taste, 589; of 
temperature, 582; of touch, 576. 
Sensory illusions, 502. 

Serous or lymph canaliculi, 103, 
351. 

Serous cavities, 351. 

Serous membranes, 5. 

Serum, 51, 59. 

Serum albumin, 9, 59. 

Shin-bone, 79. 

Shine, 555. 

Shingles, 192. 

Short sight, 525. 

Shoulder-blade, 77. 
Shoulder-girdle, 77. 

Sighing, 425. 

Sight, sense of, ,530. 

Sight, hygiene of, 525. 

Sigmoid flexure, 342. 

Single vision, 553. 

Size, perception of, 553. 



INDEX. 


683 


Skeleton, 63; appendicular, 77; 
axial, 64, 67 ; of face, 75; of 
skull, 72; peculiarities of liuman, 
83; of thorax, 386. 

Skin, 5, 441; glands of, 446; hy¬ 
giene of, 448; nerve endings in, 
576 

Skull, 72. 

Small intestine, 339. 

Smell, 587. 

Sneezing, 426. 

Solar plexus, 176. 

Solar spectrum, 519. 

Solidity, visual perception of, 554. 
Soluble ferments, 11. 

Sounds, 564. 

Sounds of the heart, 230. 

Sounds, respiratory, 391. 

Source of animal heat, 479. 

Source of fats, 472. 

Source of glycogen, 468. 

Source of muscular work, 454. 
Source of urea, 460. 

Sources of energy to Body, 304. 
Special senses, 490. 

Specific elements, 283. 

Specific nerve energies, 197. 
Spectacles, 526. 

Speech, 633. 

Spermatozoa, 651. 

Sphenoid bone, 75. 

Spherical aberration, 527. 

Spinal column, 71. 

Spinal cord, 161, 594 ; conduction 
in, 594 ; functions of, 187, 594, 
600; histology of, 181 ; mem¬ 
branes of, 160; psychical activi¬ 
ties of, 607. 

Spinal accessory nerve, 174. 

Spinal marrow, see Spinal cord. 
Spinal nerves, 163. 

Spinal nerve-roots, 163, 206. 
Spleen, 356. 

Spongioplasm, 19. 

Spontaneity, 25. 

Sporadic ganglia, 176. 

Sprains, 97. 

Squinting, 509. 

Stages of life, 670. 

Stapedius muscle, 559. 

Stapes, 558. 

Starch, 323; digestion of, 362, 367. 
Starvation, proteid, 463. 

Stationary air, 392. 

Stearin, 12. 

Stereoscopic vision, 555. 

Sternum, 72. 

Stimuli, muscular, 128; nervous, 
194. 


Stimulus, 24. 

Stirrup-bone, 558. 

Stomach, 122, 336. 

Stomata, lymphatic, 351. 

Storage tissues, 33, 464. 

Strabismus (squinting), 509. 
Structure of bone, 85. 

Strychnine poisoning, 602. 
Subclavian artery, 219. 
Subcutaneous areolar tissue, 442. 
Sublingual gland, 336. 
Submaxillary gland, 293, 334. 
Succus entericus, 371. 
Sudoriparous glands, 446. 

Superior laryngeal nerve, 420. 
Superior maxillary nerve, 174. 
Superior mesenteric artery, 220. 
Supination, 96. 

Supplemental air, 392. 

Supporting tissues, 32, 105. 
Supra-renal capsules, 359. 

Sutures, 92. 

Swallowing, 363. 

Sweat, 446. 

Sweat-glands, 446. 

Sweat-glands, nerves of, 292. 
Sweetbread, 290, 346, 358. 
Sympathetic nervous system, 5, 
160, 175. 

Sympathetic resonance, 569. 
Sympathetic resonance in ear, 573. 
Synovial membranes, 93. 

Syntonin, 125. 

System, alimentary, 328 ; circula¬ 
tory, 211; muscular, 116, 127; 
nervous, 158, 186 ; osseous, 63 ; 
respiratory, 380 ; renal, 427. 
Systemic circulation, 223. 

* Systems, anatomical, 39. 

Tactile organs, 576. 

Taking cold, 278. 

Tarsus, 79. 

Taste, 589. 

Taste-buds, 589. 

Taurocholic acid, 12. 

Tear-glands, 507. 

Tectorial membrane, 563. 

Teeth, 329. 

Teeth, structure of, 331. 
Tegmentum, 616. 

Temperature of Body, 478. 
Temperature, bodily, regulation of, 
482. 

Temperature, influence of, on pulse 
rate, 271. 

Temperature sense, 582. 
Temperatures, local, 484. 

Temporal artery, 219. 



684 


INDEX. 


Temporal bone, 75. 

Tendons, 113. 

Tension of blood gases, 407. 

Tensor tyinpani muscle, 559. 

Testis, 648. 

Tests for proteids, 10. 

Tetanus, 133, 140. 

Thalamencepbalon, 171, 618. 

Theory, resistance, 419. 

Theory of color vision, 542, 548. 

Thermogenic nerves, 484. 

Thigh-bone, 78. 

Thirst, 587. 

Thoracic duct, 350. 

Thoracic vertebrae, 66. 

Thorax, aspiration of, 251, 393 ; 
contents of, 5; movements of, in 
respiration, 385 ; skeleton of, 
387. 

Throat, 335. 

Thyroid body, 357. 

Thyroid cartilage, 634. 

Thyroid foramen, 78. 

Thymus. 358. 

Tibia, 79. 

Timbre, 564. 

Tissues, 1 ; adenoid, 103; adipose; 
107 ; areolar, 100; assimilative, 
32; automatic, 34; bony, 87; car¬ 
tilaginous, 100; classification of, 
31; conductive, 35; connective, 
63, 100; contractile, 35, 117; co¬ 
ordinating, 34, 594; elastic, 102; 
eliminative, 32; excretory, 32; ir¬ 
ritable, 33; jelly-like connective, 
103, lymphoid, 49; metabolic, 33, 
288 ; motor, 35, 121 ; muscular, 
35, 127; nervous, 176; nutritive, 
32; plain muscular, 123, 142 ; 
protective, 36; receptive, 32; re¬ 
productive, 36; respiratory, 33; 
retiform or adenoid, 103 ; secre¬ 
tory, 32, 283 ; storage, 33, 464; 
supporting, 32; undifferentiated, 
32 ; white fibrous, 100. 

Tissue-forming foods, 314, 452, 

Tone, sensations of, 564, 568. 

Tone color (timbre), 564. 

Tongue, 332. 

Tonsil, 335. 

Touch-organs, 576. 

Touch, sensations of, 578. 

Trachea, 382. 

Tracts of degeneration in spinal 
cord, 596. 

Training, 157. 

Transudata, 283. 

Trigeminal nerve, 173. 

Trophic nerves, 192, 295. 


Trypsin, 289, 369. 

Tunica adventitia, 225. 

Turbinate bones, 76. 

Tympanic bones, 557, 571. 
Tympanic membrane, 557, 571. 
Tyrein, 10. 

Tyrosin, 368, 462. 

Ulna, 77. 

Ulnar artery. 219. 

Undifferentiated tissues, 32. 

Upper maxilla, 75. 

Urea. 11, 434, 460. 

Ureter, 427. 

Uric acid, 11, 434. 

Urinary organs, 427. 

Urine, 432. 

Uterus, 652. 

Utilization of energy in Body, 310 
Utriculus, 561. 

Uvula, 329. 

Vagus nerve, 174, 264, 420. 

Valve, ileocolic, 342. 

Valves, auriculo-ventricular, 217 ; 

of veins, 226; semilunar, 217. 
Valvulae conniventes. 339. 

Vaso constrictor centre, 276. 
Vaso-dilator centre, 280. 
Vaso-dilator nerves, 273, 279, 293. 
Vaso motor nerves, 273, 280. 
Vegetable foods, 322. 

Veins, 220, 226; cephalic. 222; 
coronary, 215; hepatic, 345; in¬ 
nominate, 223; jugular, 223; long 
saphenous, 222; portal, 224, 345; 
pulmonary, 216. 

Velum interpositum, 169. 

Vena cava, 215. 

Venous blood, 225. 

Ventilation, 401. 

Ventral cavity, 3, 6, 

Ventricles of brain, 168; of larynx. 
635. 

Vermicular (peristaltic) move¬ 
ments, 365, 378. 

Vermiform appendix, 342. 
Vertebrae, 64; cervical, 68; coccy¬ 
geal, 70; dorsal or thoracic, 66; 
lumbar, 69; sacral, 69. 

Vertebral artery, 219. 

Vertebral column, 3, 64, 71. 
Vertebral foramen, 68. 

Vertebrata, 3. 

Vestibule, 560, 561, 574. 
Vibrations, analysis of, 568; com¬ 
position of, 567; pendular, 565; 
sonorous, 564. 

Villi of intestine, 341. 





INDEX. 


685 


Vision, color, 541. 

Vision, purple, 511, 535. 

Vision, stereoscopic, 555. 

Visual axis, 541. 

Visual contrasts, 547. 

Visual perceptions, 551. 

Visual sensations, 530, 536; dura¬ 
tion of, 539; intensity of, 536. 
Vital capacity, 392. 

Vitreous humor, 516. 

Vocal chords, 635. 

Vocal chords, false, 635. 

Voice, 633. 

Voluntary movements, 622. 
Vomer, 75. 

Vowels, 640. 

Walking. 151. 

Wallerian method, 210, 596. 
Wandering cells, 103. 
Warm-blooded animals, 477. 
Water, constituent, 27. 


Water, percentage of, in body, 13. 
Weber’s law, 499. 

Weber’s schema, 240, 

Weissman’s theory of heredity, 
661. 

Wheat, 323. 

Whipped blood, 52. 

Whispering, 643. 

White blood-corpuscles. 17, 47, 60. 
AVhite fibrous tissue, 101. 
Windpipe, 382. 

Work, muscular, 135. 

Wrisberg, cartilage of, 635. 

Wrist, 77. 

Xantho-proteic test, 9. 

Yawning, 425. 

Yellow spot, 511 

Young’s theory of color vision, 
542. 

Zoological position of man, 2. 












































































































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the laboratory directions are kept separate throughout the book, it is one of 
the most successful in combining these with the text. 

Kellogg’s First Lessons in Zoology. 

363 pp. 12 mo. 

Not an abridgment of the author’s Elements of Ziology, but 
an entirely independent work for high schools which do not under¬ 
take dissections. The work is based on observation of animal 
life and external structure. No detailed study of internal anatomy 
is called for and no “laboratory” other than the schoolroom is 
required. Animal activities and the life-history receive the em¬ 
phasis. Structure is considered in connection with the use of 
parts. The elements of animal physiology are so treated as to 
afford a rational basis for the study of human physiology. On the 
systematic or classificatory side the work is based on large like¬ 
nesses and on habit and habitat rather than on details of structure. 

Hertwig’s Manual of Zoology. 

Translated from the fifth German edition. By Prof. J. S. 

Kingsley, Tufts College, xi —j— 704 pp. 8 vo. $ 3.00 net. 

For over ten years this has been the leading text-book on the 
subject in Germany. The translation has been made with Amer¬ 
ican conditions in mind, while many illustrations of American 
forms have been added. 

Prof. C. 0. Whitman, University 0 / Chicago : —I am delighted to see this 
Manual translated by a competent naturalist. It is a most welcome and 
important addition to the text-books now available. 

Prof. E. B. Wilson, Columbia: —The usefulness of Hertwig’s book has 
long been recognized, and Prof. Kingsley has introduced many improvements 
that will commend themselves to American zoologists. 

Hertwig’s General Principles of Zoology. 

Translated and edited by George Wilton Field. 226 

pp. 8 vo. $1.60 net. 

A translation of Part First of the above, devoted to the history 
and general principles of the science. 

Henry Holt and Company 

NEW YORK CHICAGO 



SOME NATURE BOOKS 

Published by 

New York HENRY HOLT & CO. Chicago 


Britton : A Manual of the Flora of the Northern 

States and Canada 121110, $2.25 net. 


“It is far superior to any other work of its class ever published in 
America.”— Prof. Conway Macmillan, University of Minnesota. 

Waters! Ferns (A Manual for the Northeastern States) 

By C. E Waieks, PhD (Johns Hopkins). With an Analytical Key 
based on the Stalks With over rco illustrations from original draw- 
ings and photographs 362 pp. Square 8vo. 

A popular but thoroughly scientific book, covering all the ferns in 
the region covered by Britton’s Manual. 


Kerner and Oliver: Natural History of Plants 

New and cheaper edition. 2 vols. 777-983 pp. Fully indexed. Over 2000 
wood engravings. $11.00 net. 

“For the first time we have in the English language a great work 
upon the living plant, profound, in a sense exhaustive, thoroughly 
reliable, but in language simple and beautiful enough to attract a cnild 
. . . The plates are most of them of unusual beauty. Author, translator, 
illustrators, publishers, have united to make the work a success.” 

—The Outlook. 


Noel: Buz; 


the Life and Adventures of a Honey Bee. 
i2mo, $1.00. 


Packard: Guide to the Study of Insects, 

and a Treatise on those Injurious and Beneficial to Crops. 8vo, $5.00 net. 

—Entomology for Beginners, 

for the use of Young Folks, Fruit-Growers, Farmers, etc. umo, $1.40 net. 

Scudder : Butterflies 

Their Structure, Changes, and Life-Histories, with Special Reference 
to American Forms. Being an application of the “Doctrine of Descent” 
to the Study of Butterflies. With an ap'pendix. i2mo, $1.50 net. 


—Brief Guide to the Commoner Butterflies of the 
Northern United States and Canada 

Being an introduction to a Knowledge of their Life Histories. New 
edition with 21 plates, containing tn all 97 illustrations. i2mo, $1.50. 

—The Life of a Butterfly 

A chapter in natural history for the general reader. i6mo, $1.00 

Underwood: Our Native Ferns and Their Allies 

Revised. i2mo, $1.00. 

—Moulds, Mildews, and Mushrooms 

A Guide to the Systematic Study of Fungi and the Mycetozoa and their 
Literature. Illustrated with ten Heliotype plates, umo, $1.50 net. 


Lucas: The Open Road 

One hundred and twenty poems 


With illustrated cover-linings. Green 
and gold flexible covers. i6mo, $1.50, 

of Out-door life from some sixty authors. 






































































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